Electric Fish

The storm had been raging for three hours when the power finally died. Mara sat in the dark of her ex-husband's apartment, surrounded by twenty-seven glass bowls of water, each containing a single goldfish that David had named after jazz musicians. The breakup agreement had been brutal: she kept the apartment, he kept his vinyl collection, she got stuck with Miles, Dolly, Bird, and two dozen others she couldn't bring herself to flush.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the fish like liquid copper in their suspended worlds. She'd stopped feeding them three days ago. Not out of cruelty, but out of exhaustion—the kind that settles in your bones like wet snow. The goldfish, David used to say, were the only things that truly understood stillness. They were also the only things he'd ever committed to longer than eight months.

Another lightning strike, closer this time. The sky cracked open and rain lashed against the windows. In the sudden brightness, Mara saw her reflection: thirty-four, hollow-cheeked, wearing David's old flannel shirt because her own clothes were still in boxes. She looked at the bowls, at the fish swimming in their endless circles, and felt something snap inside her chest.

She stood up, carried each bowl to the bathroom, and poured them one by one into the bathtub. The water rose, warm and still, and suddenly there were dozens of orange bodies darting through the porcelain expanse. They swam together, frantically alive, no longer trapped in their separate galaxies.

Mara watched them for a long time. Then she began to cry—really cry, the ugly kind that makes your chest heave and your nose run. She cried for the years she'd spent circling in her own glass bowl, for the way David had looked at her like she was decorative rather than necessary, for the strange freedom she felt watching these confined creatures suddenly given space to collide with each other.

When the power finally returned at dawn, she fed them all the flakes David had left behind. The goldfish darted to the surface, electric and voracious, and Mara realized she was hungry for the first time in weeks.