Glass Bowl Syndrome

Marcus stared at the **goldfish** swimming in endless circles, its orange scales catching the fluorescent light of his cubicle. His daughter had left it when she moved out last month—a temporary arrangement that had become permanent, much like everything else in his forty-seven years of existence.

He swallowed his daily **vitamin** with lukewarm **water** from the office cooler, the chalky coating catching in his throat. The supplements were supposed to help with stress, with energy, with the gnawing feeling that he'd reached his peak at age thirty-two and it had all been a slow drift downstream since then.

"You're up for the regional director position," Chen had said that morning, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. Marcus knew what that meant: another rung up the corporate **pyramid**, more hours, more blood pressure medication, more vitamins to counteract the slow poisoning of his soul. The office hierarchy was designed this way—each level promised a view that never actually materialized because there was always another level above, always someone else's foot on your neck.

The **cable** management under his desk was a disaster of tangled cords and forgotten connections, much like his marriage. Sarah had left two years ago, not for another man but for herself—for the possibility of something real, something that wasn't just performing the role of corporate wife and suburban mother. Marcus couldn't blame her. He'd thought about leaving himself, every single day, but inertia was a powerful drug.

He watched the goldfish pause, its tiny mouth opening and closing at the water's surface. How much did it remember? Three seconds? Seven? Sometimes Marcus envied that kind of emptiness—the ability to exist in an eternal present without the weight of accumulated failures and compromises.

The water cooler hummed behind him. His phone buzzed with a notification about tomorrow's quarterly review. Somewhere above him, through the drop ceiling and concrete floors, executives were making decisions about which lives to streamline, which departments to restructure, which fish to move to smaller bowls.

Marcus dropped another vitamin into his palm. He was good at this—swallowing things he didn't want to feel. The goldfish completed another circle. He reached for his phone and scrolled through cable listings, looking for something to watch tonight, something to drown out the silence of his apartment.

Three seconds of memory and then the world was new again. What a gift that would be.