Last Transmission

The goldfish had outlived them all. Three years after Mark's funeral, that absurd orange carp still circled its bowl on Sarah's windowsill, its mouth opening and closing in what she'd decided was silent judgment.

Sarah pressed her palm against the cool glass of the tank. Mark had bought it as a joke—something low-maintenance for their high-maintenance friendship. He'd been wrong about the low-maintenance part. He'd been wrong about a lot of things.

Her iPhone buzzed on the counter, the charging cable draped across the granite like a severed umbilical cord. Another notification from the support group. *'It gets easier,'* they promised. *'The waves get smaller.'* Lies spoken by people who'd never lost their person.

Mark hadn't just been her friend. He'd been the witness to her life, the keeper of her secrets, the one who knew which lies she told herself and which ones she believed. When he died, she'd lost the mirror that reflected her truest self.

She reached for the phone, her finger hovering over his contact info. Three years of saved voicemails. Three years of unread texts that still lived in her archived messages, a digital ghost she couldn't bring herself to exorcise.

The goldfish surfaced, breaking the water's surface with a tiny splash. Sarah watched it through blurred vision. In the early days after Mark's death, she'd sometimes catch herself talking to the fish, telling it things she'd meant to tell him. It had become a confessor of last resort.

"You're the only one left," she whispered to the glass.

The fish flicked its tail, indifferent to her existential crisis. It continued its endless laps around the bowl, trapped in its transparent prison, carrying on without comprehension of its circumstance.

Sarah understood that feeling completely.

She picked up the iPhone, scrolled to Mark's name, and did what she'd been threatening to do for months. She deleted the thread. Six years of messages vanished in a heartbeat—late-night drunken texts, conspiracy theories, Netflix recommendations, the last incomplete message that had never been answered.

The cable lay still on the counter. The room felt suddenly lighter.

"Okay," she said to the empty apartment. "Okay."

The goldfish swam to the surface, waiting for food that would come later, as it always did. Some things, Sarah realized, you didn't have to carry forever. You could just feed them and keep moving, circling your own bowl, alive despite everything.