What do you remember when the pool is empty?

It’s 3:30 a.m. and the water’s still, the lights low. I’ve been sitting on the edge for twenty minutes, watching the way the tiles hold the shape of all those laps—ghosts in the concrete. I keep thinking about the man who swam for ninety minutes every Tuesday, never spoke to anyone, just moved like he was chasing something that wasn’t there. What does silence remember? Not what we say, but what we leave behind in the space between breaths.