The Bones of Us

The goldfish was floating sideways when Marcus found it. Bloated and orange against the glass, a small tragedy in a ten-gallon tank. 'Barnaby's dead,' he said, not looking at me. 'Probably for hours.'

I was in the bathroom cutting my hair. The scissors made that satisfying crunch-snip sound with each pass. Five inches of dark curls fell into the sink, piling up like something that had already died. Marcus hated my hair short. He loved to wrap it around his fist during sex, a tether, a leash.

'Flush it,' I called back. Another snip.

He appeared in the doorway, the iPhone in his hand glowing with a new notification. He'd been checking it compulsively for weeks, thumb swiping up at the screen every thirty seconds like a nervous tic. A zombie searching for brains, only his hunger was for someone else's attention.

'You're really doing it?' He gestured at my hair.

'Feels like time.' I met his eyes in the mirror. 'Like shedding something.'

We'd been dead for months. Going through the motions. He worked late. I took up reading at bars alone, letting men buy me drinks I didn't drink. We were two people haunting the same apartment, ghosts of who we'd been when we moved in three years ago, full of plans and paint swatches.

The fox appeared at the sliding glass door that night. A red vixen, gaunt and magnificent, pressing her nose against the glass, eyes reflecting the kitchen light. Marcus was asleep on the couch, the iPhone resting on his chest, rising and falling with each breath. I watched the fox watching us—two predators in a stalemate, she hungry for food, me hungry for something I couldn't name.

She left when I stepped toward the door. A flash of rust in the darkness, gone before I could decide whether to open it.

In the morning, Marcus woke to an empty closet and a note on the counter. Short hair feels like freedom against my neck. The goldfish wasn't the only thing that needed to be let go. Sometimes love dies slowly, and you have to be the one who notices, who cuts the cord, who walks away into the dark like something wild, like something that knows when to run.