The Art of Forgetting

The goldfish circles its bowl, memory resetting every three seconds. David watches it from the kitchen counter, wishing grief worked the same way - that he could forget Lena left him every few moments, reset to the time before her lipstick mark stained his shirt collar.

He meets Marcus at the padel club. It's their Wednesday ritual, though Marcus doesn't know Lena is gone. Doesn't know David's been sleeping in the guest room for three weeks, moving through his own house like a ghost haunting itself.

"You're playing like shit," Marcus says, slamming the ball against the glass wall.

"Tired."

"Bullshit." Marcus wipes sweat from his forehead. "She left, didn't she?"

David's racquet slips from his hand.

After, David drives to the coast. He's been swimming every night since she left - cold ocean, dark water, the shock of it. Something about forcing your body to move through resistance, the way the ocean pushes back. How you have to work for every inch.

He strips to his boxers and walks into the surf. It's bearable at first, then cruel. He swims until his arms burn, until he can't feel his fingers. Treads water in the blackness, wondering how long he could stay out here before something noticed him. Before the ocean decided to keep him.

The man beside him in the locker room last week had chest scars - claw marks. "Bear attack," he'd said, and David had believed him until he noticed the careful symmetry.

We all lie about what hurt us.

Back home, the goldfish waits at the glass mouth of its bowl. Open and close. Open and close. Remembering nothing. David taps the glass gently and watches it scatter, startled anew. The thing about goldfish: they don't actually have three-second memories. That's a lie people tell themselves to feel better about keeping something in a bowl.

David pours too much wine. He'll forget tomorrow too, but not all at once. In increments. In the slow erosion of mornings without her coffee cup on the counter. In the way his hand still reaches for her side of the bed.

The goldfish circles. Open and close. Bearing it.