The Weight of What Remains

The coaxial cable lay coiled on the floor like a dead snake, a final tether to a life that no longer fit. Mara had taken the television but left this behind—appropriate, really. She'd always been better at the clean break than he was.

Elias sat on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the blister pack of vitamins on the counter. His daily routine, her daily routine, now blurred together in the aftermath. The orange D3 capsule mocked him. She'd bought them because his doctor said he was deficient, because she cared about his bones, his heart, his future. Now there was no 'their' future. Just his.

The cat, Binx, wound around his ankles, miaowing insistently. The last joint custody arrangement they'd argued about at 2am. 'He likes you better,' she'd said, which wasn't true then but seemed to be now. Binx sensed the absence, the hollow spaces where her things used to be.

He needed to get out.

The community pool was nearly empty at this hour—midday on a Tuesday, when normal people were working. Elias stripped down to his trunks and slipped into the water. Swimming had always been his meditation, the only time his brain quieted. The silence was different now. Not peaceful but pregnant with everything he wasn't saying.

He pushed off the wall, stroke after stroke, until his muscles burned. Underwater, he could pretend he was somewhere else. That the apartment wasn't echoing with her absence. That he wasn't thirty-seven and starting over, again.

When he finally surfaced, gasping, the older woman in the next lane was watching him. 'You swim like you're fleeing something,' she said, not unkindly.

Elias treaded water for a moment, considering. 'Maybe I am.'

She nodded once, knowing, and resumed her laps.

Back home, the cable was still on the floor. The orange vitamin still waited. Binx still needed feeding. Some things, Elias realized, you couldn't outswim. You just had to learn to breathe underwater.