What the Palm Lines Know

The fluorescents hum their usual sick song above me, and I push the spinach around my plate like I'm conducting some tiny, miserable orchestra. Corporate cafeteria at 2 PM on a Tuesday.

My phone buzzes. Marcus again.

"I feel like a zombie," I'd told him last night, lying in our bed that suddenly feels too large, his back to me, the familiar landscape of his spine a foreign country. "Just going through the motions, you know?"

He'd reached out, traced the lines on my palm with his thumb—heart line, head line, life line, all the bullshit palmistry he'd picked up from his mother. "Your life line is short," he'd joked, trying for levity that landed like dead weight.

Now I stare at my palm during my lunch break, the creased skin there, and wonder if he was right about us.

The spinach is wilting under the dressing. I peel an orange, the citrus mist hitting my eyes, making them water. Or maybe I'm crying. Can't tell anymore. Six years together, and I can't distinguish between生理反应 and actual grief.

I walk to the water fountain afterward, watch the stream hit the metal basin. Water, the great destroyer and rebuilder. It carved the Grand Canyon, it's wearing down my marriage drop by drop.

Marcus wants to try couples therapy. Says he'll do anything. But I saw him watching that new associate at the holiday party, the way his eyes lit up like they used to when he looked at me. The zombie comment had been projection.

I should call him back. Instead I sit on a bench by the building's tiny ornamental pond, watching the koi glide through murky water, alive in a way I don't feel.

My palm against my thigh. The orange rind in the trash can. The uneaten spinach congealing on my tray.

I stand up. I don't call Marcus back. I don't go back to my desk. I just walk toward the parking lot, toward whatever comes after being dead together.