The Goldfish at 3 AM

The storm outside matched the static in my head — lightning fracturing the sky every few seconds, illuminating the apartment I'd shared with Marcus for three years. Now half the closets were empty. I sat on the couch staring at my iPhone, thumb hovering over his name, that particular brand of modern desperation: the urge to reach out to someone who's already gone.

On the counter, a plastic bag from the grocery run I'd forced myself on earlier that day. Inside, a wilted bag of spinach and rotisserie chicken — the ingredients for the salad he used to make when I had deadline panic attacks. Some pathetic part of me thought if I ate what he'd cooked, maybe I'd absorb his calm. Instead I'd just stared at the spinach wilting on the counter while the microwave clock ticked toward midnight.

The goldfish — Bowie, because of the different-colored eyes — drifted to the front of his bowl, mouth opening and closing in silent judgment. Marcus had bought him on our first anniversary as a joke about pets being practice for real responsibility. "Look at him," he'd said, pressing his chest against my back, arms wrapped around my waist. "Already a better father than mine." Now the fish kept swimming in meaningless circles while I kept checking a phone that stayed silent.

I started running two weeks ago. Marcus always said I should — said he loved the way I looked after a morning jog, face flushed, hair wild, alive in some way I rarely let myself be. So I'd downloaded a couch-to-5K app and started hitting the pavement at dawn, lungs burning, thighs aching, running until my thoughts blurred into pure sensation. The physical pain was easier than the other kind.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the dust motes floating in Bowie's water. The fish had been listing sideways all morning — swimming on a tilt, drifting toward the filter like he'd given up. Some morbid part of me wondered if fish felt heartbreak, or if that particular cruelty was reserved for the ones who remembered everything.

My iPhone buzzed. Not Marcus. A weather alert: severe thunderstorm until 4 AM. Typical. The universe couldn't even orchestrate a properly dramatic storm for my properly dramatic breakdown.

I stood up, knees cracking, and carried Bowie's bowl to the kitchen. The spinach was still sitting on the counter, mockingly green. I dumped both into the trash — the salad that wouldn't get made, the fish that wouldn't get fed, the life that wouldn't get lived. At least the goldfish had the dignity to die quietly. I was still here, 3 AM and lightning-streaked, waiting for a text that wouldn't come and running from a ghost who'd already left.