The Game of Life

I don’t mind people, really.
In fact, I think I might even like them—or at least the idea of them.
It’s just this part that exhausts me: the surface choreography, the autopilot exchanges,
treading water in the shallow end with the careful ritual we’ve all memorized.

Hey, how are you?
Good, you?
Good.

Marco.
Polo.

Always Marco Polo. Never diving deeper.

Everyone calling out with eyes squeezed shut, afraid to open them underwater.

Marco—hoping for an answer that feels real.
Polo—hoping someone responds not because the game demands it, but because they want to be found.
Because they’re quietly drowning too.

I’m no different.

I ask the same questions. Marco. Wear the same practiced smile.
I nod at the right moments, laugh when a joke is made. Polo.
It’s not that I don’t care. I do—probably more than I let on.

But we all seem to understand: stay afloat, follow the rules, don’t go too deep.
No one wants to discover what’s waiting in the quieter water.

So I hover at the edges of conversations.
Like a sailboat bobbing in still water—moving, but not arriving.
Swirling my drink. Drawing little whirlpools.

Words drift between people like unanchored wood:
light, harmless, designed not to sink.
I watch for the moment something honest might rise up—
a breath held too long, a silence that threatens to deepen.

But the sea stays calm.
No ripple. No shift.
Just the quiet choreography we all perform,
like we’re afraid of what might surface if anyone breaks the pattern.

Marco.
Polo.

Anything to keep us above the deep end—
where the real selves live.
Where we keep the questions that matter
and the answers that scare us.

Back to the game.

I imagine what would happen if I broke the rules.
If I asked someone how they really were.
Not their commute. Not their day.
The small joys they carry, the thoughts that visit in quiet moments.

If I mentioned that sometimes I catch myself smiling at nothing—
remembering something someone said three conversations ago.
Something they forgot. Let float away.

What if someone asked me something like that?
What if someone swam down to where I really am?

The thought fills me with a gentle restlessness—
like watching rain from inside a warm room,
knowing I could step out if I wanted to.
But I don’t.

Because maybe we’re all just floating here,
calling out Marco into the echoing space.
Getting back our safe Polo.
Waiting for someone curious enough to swim toward the sound.

Maybe I’m ready to be the one.

Marco.
Polo.
Marco.

The echo fades.
And for once, I don’t rush to fill the silence.