Goldfish in the Broken Vase

Julie hadn't run since David's funeral six months ago. Her running shoes gathered dust by the door, mocking her with their pristine soles. Today, she finally laced them up.

Her therapist had prescribed it—exercise, fresh air, movement—like some kind of emotional vitamin supplement. As if twenty minutes of cardio could cure the hollow space where her marriage used to be.

She jogged past the park where David had once pitched baseballs to their neighbor's kids, his laugh carrying across the diamond. She'd stood on the sidelines then, holding their future in her uterus, not yet knowing she'd lose both the pregnancy and him within the same year.

Her feet carried her to the pet store she'd been avoiding. The one where they'd bought three goldfish on their third date. David had named them after the three bases in baseball—First, Second, and Home. "We're rounding the bases," he'd said, winking.

Now only Third remained, swimming endless circles in a bowl on her nightstand. The other two had flushed themselves in that poetic way fish do, jumping from their bowl when nobody's watching. Sometimes Julie envied them—the clean finality of it.

She bought the cheapest vodka on the way home, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Not from the running. From the remembering.

Third was still swimming when she returned, his orange scales dull in the afternoon light. She dropped a single flake of food into his bowl, watching it drift downward like her own appetite for anything that used to matter.

"You and me, buddy," she whispered, the vodka burning her throat. "Swimming in circles until we forget we're not going anywhere."

The vitamin bottle on her counter caught the light—prenatal vitamins, expired by three years. She'd forgotten to throw them away. Some things you kept not because they were useful, but because they were proof you once believed in a future that never came.

Julie unlaced her running shoes and sat on the floor, watching Third swim. Outside, children played baseball. The crack of a bat echoed through her open window, sharp and clean and utterly indifferent to her grief.

She closed her eyes and let herself feel it—that particular vitamin D deficiency of the soul. The way love could leave you malnourished long after the person was gone.

Tomorrow, she'd run again. But tonight, she'd just float.