Memory's Goldfish

The pharmaceutical-grade **vitamin** C tablets sat on the bathroom counter, a daily ritual Richard couldn't remember whether he'd already performed. At fifty-three, his mind had become a swimming **pool** of half-memories, fragments floating just beneath the surface, never quite breaking through.

Elena had moved out three weeks ago. She'd left her sun **hat** on the porch hook—a straw thing with a frayed ribbon she'd worn during that last, disastrous vacation in Palm Springs. He hadn't moved it. Some mornings he'd catch himself reaching for it, his hand jerking back when he remembered she wasn't there to wear it.

The goldfish—the one they'd won at the county fair seven years ago, the one that was supposed to die in a month—still swam in its bowl on the kitchen counter. Richard fed it every morning, watched it create endless, perfect circles in its tiny universe. Sometimes he envied it. **Goldfish** supposedly had three-second memories. What a gift, to live entirely in the perpetual now, unburdened by what had been or what might never be again.

He sat on the back patio, the desert sun baking his shoulders, and pressed his forehead against his **palm**. The dermatologist had found something on his arm last week. Probably nothing, she'd said. But the word "biopsy" had a way of echoing in the quiet spaces of a half-empty house.

His phone buzzed. A text from Elena: "Can we talk?"

Richard stared at the screen. Part of him wanted to respond with everything—how sorry he was, how he'd change, how the house felt like a museum exhibit of their marriage. But the words wouldn't come. Instead he watched a lizard scuttle across the patio, wondered what it would be like to exist only in this moment, no past, no future, just the sun on your back and the next meal to catch.

The goldfish swam another circle. The vitamin tablets waited. Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow he'd remember who he was supposed to be, and everything would make sense again.