Gravity in the Shallow End

The papaya sat on the counter, its skin mottled with yellow and green like a bruise that wouldn't heal. Maya hadn't bought it. Daniel must have, in that brief window last week when he'd come over to collect his things—the coffee grinder, the yoga mat, the goldfish in its too-small bowl that had been her birthday gift to him three years ago.

'Are you keeping him?' Daniel had asked, and Maya had said yes, because saying no would have meant something else entirely.

Now the goldfish swam in lazy circles on her bookshelf, its orange scales catching the afternoon light. It had already outlived their relationship by two weeks. She'd read somewhere that goldfish could live for twenty years. The thought was exhausting.

Her iPhone buzzed against the marble countertop—a group chat from work, someone complaining about the new client. Maya didn't open it. Instead she stared at the pool below her balcony, its blue surface broken by the neighbor's children screaming with that particular joy that came from having never known heartbreak. The baseball game drifted up from somewhere—a radio, a television—the crack of the bat, the roar of a crowd that cared about things that didn't matter.

She sliced the papaya open. Its flesh was bright orange, shockingly vibrant against the gray of her kitchen. Inside, black seeds clustered like secrets she'd never tell him: about the way she'd started pulling away months before he noticed, about the nights she'd lain awake beside him feeling utterly alone, about how relief had been her first real emotion when he finally said what they'd both been waiting for.

The first bite was sweet, almost cloying. The second was better. Down by the pool, one of the children climbed onto the diving board, hesitated, then jumped—a small body suspended in air before gravity did what gravity always did.

Maya ate the rest of the papaya standing at the counter, juice running down her wrist, and thought about how some things were meant to end, and how that wasn't tragedy, just truth.