Seven Years of Swimming Circles

The goldfish had been dead for three days before Maya noticed. That was the problem, wasn't it? She and James had become experts at not noticing things. The fish floated belly-up in its bowl on the kitchen counter, a tiny orange martyr to their mutual neglect.

"When did you last feed it?" Maya asked, her voice flat.

James looked up from his phone, his jaw working around a piece of gum. "I thought you were doing it."

"I thought you were."

They stood there in their pajamas at 11 AM on a Tuesday, neither one leaving for work anymore, neither one caring enough to fight about it properly. The air between them had grown thick with unsaid things, seven years of disappointments stacking up like unread mail.

Maya caught her reflection in the fishbowl's curved glass. A strand of gray hair had appeared at her temple sometime in the last month — she'd stopped checking. She used to pull them out, used to panic about aging. Now she let herself look at it, really look at it, and thought: good. Let it happen. Let everything rot.

"Remember when we bought this fish?" she said. "We couldn't decide on a name."

"Goldie," James said automatically, still not looking at her. "We called it Goldie."

"No. That was your suggestion. I said no."

He finally met her eyes, and she saw it again — that look he'd been giving her for months now. The look that said he was already gone, just waiting for the right time to tell her.

"Does it matter?" he asked. "It's a fish, Maya."

She reached into the bowl, the water cold against her fingers, and pulled the tiny body out. It was lighter than she expected. "Everything matters," she said softly. "That's the problem."

The orange of its scales had already begun to dull, the vibrant color fading to something lifeless and gray. Like them. Like everything they used to be.

"I'm staying with my sister," James said, like he'd been rehearsing it. "Just for a while."

Maya nodded once, watching the fish bowl ripple. "Don't come back."