Storm Season

The goldfish circled its bowl, oblivious to the wreckage of our marriage. Three years of fertility treatments, two miscarriages, and now this: Mark staring at the television, watching baseball highlights while I sat on the balcony, palm sweating against the cold glass of wine.

"You coming back inside?" he called, not turning from the screen.

Lightning cracked the sky open, a violent white fissure that illuminated his silhouette—shoulders slumped, remote control clutched like something holy. We'd become this: two people who'd loved each other once, now reduced to weather patterns and manufactured distance.

I swallowed another vitamin—D3, the doctor said, for bone health, for hope, as if brittle bones were the problem. As if something we could buy at CVS could fix the hollow space where our child should have been.

"Did you hear me?"

"I heard you."

The storm broke then. Rain like judgment, thunder like something finally being said. I watched a palm tree thrash in the wind, its fronds tearing loose, and thought: this is what happens when you hold on too hard to things that want to let go.

Mark appeared at the sliding door, face lit by another flash of lightning. He looked tired. He looked like someone who'd stopped asking why and started asking what now.

"The fish died," he said quietly.

I turned. The goldfish floated at the surface, that particular orange that shouldn't exist in nature, that shouldn't exist anywhere at all.

"Yeah," I said. "I guess it did."

We stood there as the storm passed, neither of us moving toward the other, neither of us moving away. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stay in the room while everything ends. Sometimes the bravest thing is admitting there's nothing left to save.

The baseball game ended. Someone won. Someone always does.