The Goldfish at Dawn

She found him standing on the back porch at 5 AM, cradling the fishbowl like a fragile heart. The goldfish—Leonard, they'd jokingly named him on their first date seven years ago—swam in slow, neon circles, oblivious to the way their marriage was circling the drain.

"You're wearing the hat," she said, leaning against the doorframe. The fedora, something he'd bought on a whim in New Orleans, perched on his head at an angle that suggested he'd already made up his mind.

He didn't turn. "A fox was in the yard earlier. Just watching the house."

"We don't get foxes here."

"We don't get a lot of things anymore."

She stepped onto the porch, the morning dew seeping into her slippers. On the small table between his elbow and the wall sat a scattering of pills—vitamin D, B-complex, the supplements she'd begged him to take since his doctor's warning last month. He'd resisted them like he resisted everything else: her suggestions, her affection, the very idea that they might need to work at staying together.

She reached out, her palm grazing his shoulder. He flinched.

"I'm not leaving because of the fight," he said quietly. "I'm leaving because I forgot to care that we were fighting."

The goldfish surfaced, gasping at the bowl's rim.

"So what happens to Leonard?" she asked, though she wasn't really talking about the fish anymore.

"He was yours. The anniversary gift."

"We won him at the carnival."

"Same thing."

He set the bowl on the table between them, a glass wall separating two territories of the same diminishing kingdom. The sun was coming up now, painting the sky in bruised purples and hopeful oranges—the colors of things ending and beginning simultaneously.

"Take the vitamins," she whispered. "Please."

"I will," he said, and for the first time in months, he sounded like he meant something. "Wherever I end up."

He took off the hat and set it beside the fishbowl. Then he walked back into the house to pack his life into boxes while she stood on the porch watching the light change, listening to the gentle, persistent sound of a fish swimming in circles, learning to be alone.