Memory's Goldfish

The cracked iPhone lay on the nightstand, its screen cycling through photos of her. Three years of mornings, vacations, arguments, and make-up sex, reduced to glass and aluminum. Elena hadn't deleted a single one. Neither had I, though I should have.

'You're like a goldfish,' she'd said, the night she left. 'Seven seconds of memory, then you forget everything that matters.' I'd laughed, thinking she was being dramatic. But now, standing in our—my—kitchen at 3 AM, I realized she was wrong. Goldfish actually remember for months. I was the one who couldn't hold onto anything good.

The papaya sat rotting on the counter. We'd bought it together at that farmer's market she loved, the one where the vendors knew her name and asked about her writing. 'Perfect for breakfast,' she'd said, pressing her thumb into the yellow flesh. Now it was soft and brown, a testament to how long she'd been gone. How long I'd been unable to throw away anything that reminded me of her.

I started running the morning after the boxes were packed. Not jogging—running. Sprinting until my lungs burned and my vision blurred, until I couldn't think. It was the only time my brain shut up, the only time I didn't reach for my phone to text her, didn't stare at the papaya, didn't feel like I was drowning in air.

My neighbors thought I was training for something. A marathon, maybe. Or maybe they thought I was running from something. They were right.

Tonight, though, I couldn't run. A twisted ankle from three nights ago had finally forced me to stop, to sit with everything I'd been outrunning. So I stood in the kitchen, surrounded by the ghosts of our life together, and finally let myself feel it all.

The iPhone lit up with a notification: a new memory from three years ago today. Elena, grinning in some dive bar, holding up a goldfish cracker to the camera. 'Your spirit animal,' she'd captioned it.

I picked up the papaya, sticky and fermenting. Through the window, streetlights caught the tears on my face. Somewhere out there, she was probably sleeping soundly. Maybe she'd found someone who could remember. Maybe she was running too.

I threw the papaya into the trash. Then, for the first time in three months, I deleted the photos. All 2,847 of them.

Tomorrow, I told myself. Tomorrow I'll stop running.