The Weight of Water

The orange emergency button stared at me from the wall of the pool locker room—bright, demanding, impossible. I'd been coming here for three months since the divorce, swimming laps until my muscles burned, trying to exhaust myself enough that sleep would come without bargaining. But the water only reminded me of you.

I should be running. That's what the therapist said. Literally running—endorphins, forward momentum, all that. But running felt like fleeing, and I'd done enough of that when I packed my boxes and left our dog with you because Barkley was yours first, really, and I couldn't bear the way he'd look at me with those confused eyes, asking where you were.

"You're drowning," she'd said. "In the metaphorical sense."

I changed into my swimsuit. The pool was empty at 5 AM—that's why I came. No witnesses to the way I sometimes stopped mid-lap to gasp for air that had nothing to do with chlorine.

The orange buoy bobbed at lane four. I slid into the water, cold and shocking, and began my laps. Stroke, breathe, stroke. Somewhere around lap twelve, my mind wandered to that night in Mexico when we went swimming in the ocean at midnight, drunk on cheap tequila and the terrifying electricity of new love. You'd said the moon looked like an orange slice suspended in black water. I'd thought you were the most poetic person I'd ever met.

Now I know you were just observant.

I emerged from the pool hours later, pruned and exhausted but still not empty enough of you. My phone buzzed—your sister, sending a photo: Barkhy running through autumn leaves, his orange frisbee in his mouth, both of them mid-leap, caught in that perfect suspension between ground and air.

"He misses you," the text read.

I stood there dripping, understanding suddenly why I'd chosen swimming over running. Running lets you leave things behind. Swimming forces you to feel the weight of everything you're carrying, every single stroke.

I typed back: "I miss him too." Then deleted it and wrote: "Tell him I said good boy."

Some weights you never stop carrying. You just learn to move through them differently.