The Weight of Water

The corporate wellness brochure had promised renewal. Instead, Marcus found himself standing on a **padel** court at 7 AM, sweating through his polyester shirt while his coworkers whooped like they hadn't spent the last decade destroying their spines in ergonomic chairs.

Forty-two years old and he moved like a **zombie** — not the pop-culture kind with outstretched arms and hunger for brains, but the hollowed-out variety that still remembered how to knot a tie and attend performance reviews. The divorce had stripped him of his furniture, his dignity, and apparently, his ability to sleep through the night.

"Your form, man," chirped Brad from Accounting, twenty-five and visibly thrilled to be alive. "You gotta pivot like you mean it."

Marcus watched the ball sail past him, a small white sphere that reminded him of **baseball** games with his father, back when weekends meant something other than empty apartments and the hum of his refrigerator. His father had taught him how to keep his eye on the ball, how to swing for the fences. His father had also died alone, Marcus remembered suddenly, and wasn't that just the most terrifying thought he'd had all morning?

Later, they were herded to a 'reflection session' by a facilitator with too many teeth and a philosophy degree. The room smelled like essential oils and desperation. Marcus sat in the back, nursing lukewarm **water** from a plastic bottle, trying to remember the last time he'd felt something genuine.

"What burdens are you carrying?" Teeth asked them. "What do you need to let go?"

The woman beside him — Sarah from HR, he thought — began crying softly. She spoke about fertility treatments and the way her husband looked at her sometimes, like she was a project instead of a person. Marcus wanted to reach out, to offer something human, but his hands stayed folded in his lap. He couldn't even **bear** his own weight these days, much less anyone else's.

That night, he sat on his hotel balcony with a bottle of hotel-room whiskey, watching the pool lights flicker across the water. He thought about calling his ex-wife. He thought about his father. He thought about the way Sarah had looked when she'd stopped crying — eyes red, makeup ruined, somehow more real than anyone he'd seen in years.

Marcus took a drink and realized he was crying too. Not for anything specific. Not even for everything. Just for the sheer, exhausting business of being alive when being alive felt like such a mistake.

Below him, someone dove into the pool. The water rippled outward, carrying something small and necessary across the surface. Marcus watched until the ripples disappeared, then went inside and finally, finally slept.