What We Lose in the Lightning

Anna sat on the fire escape, her iPhone clutched like a weapon she couldn't bring herself to use. The message glowing on screen had arrived three hours ago: *I can't do this anymore.* Not unexpected. Not after six months of her walking through their shared apartment like a zombie, emotionally hollowed out by layoffs and the relentless pressure of existing in a city that demanded everything and gave back nothing but gray skies and expensive coffee.

Behind her, Marcus was in the kitchen. She could hear him making dinner — the familiar rhythm of chopping, the sound of water running. He was making that spinach and chickpea curry she'd pretended to love, back when she still had the energy to pretend. The smell drifted through the open window, warm and domestic and utterly devastating.

They'd met during a lightning storm three years ago, both ducking into the same bodega to escape a sudden downpour. He'd made her laugh about something — she couldn't remember what — and they'd ended up sharing an umbrella and walking twenty blocks in the rain, soaked to the bone and talking about everything and nothing. She'd felt electric then, alive in a way she hadn't felt in years.

Now she felt like a character in someone else's story, going through motions she'd memorized but stopped feeling.

Her father had loved baseball. Before the dementia took him completely, he'd sit with her watching games, explaining the statistics and strategies with that gentle patience he'd reserved for her alone. *It's a game of failure,* he'd say, *but you keep swinging.* She wondered what he'd make of her now, standing on the precipice of something she'd spent years building, too exhausted to fight for it, too afraid to let it go.

The iPhone buzzed again. Marcus, asking if she was coming inside to eat.

She stared at the screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard. In the distance, actual lightning flickered against the darkening sky, silent and beautiful and utterly indifferent to human heartbreak. Some things, she realized, you don't get to choose. You only choose how you stand in the storm.

Anna typed: *Yes. I'm coming.*

Then she deleted it and typed: *No. I think we need to talk.*

This was her pitch. This was her swing.