The Goldfish at the End of the World

The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional bubble from the bowl on the windowsill. Sarah watched the goldfish—Barry, according to the tag still hanging from the bowl—drift through the water, opening and closing its mouth in silent conversation. She'd inherited him when her neighbor across the hall stopped coming home. Three weeks now.

Mark's key in the lock. The sound still made her stomach tighten, conditioned response from three years of marriage that had somehow dissolved into something neither could name anymore.

"How was the meeting?" she asked, not turning from the window.

"Same. They're talking about restructuring again." He dropped his bag on the floor. The cat—Miso, stubbornly affectionate—wound around his legs, purring. "I feel like a zombie, Sarah. Just going through the motions."

"You said that yesterday."

"Because it's true every day." He moved to the kitchen, opened the cabinet. The sound of the vitamin bottle rattling. "You should take these. The D3. It's winter, we're not getting enough sun."

She finally turned. Mark stood in the kitchen's warm light, his shirt wrinkled, his eyes exhausted. The orange juice carton sat on the counter beside his glass. "I'm not sure supplements fix what's wrong with us."

He paused, his hand hovering over the vitamin bottle. "I don't know what fixes us either. But I keep thinking about my mother. How she took her vitamins every morning until the end. Some small thing she could control."

Barry the goldfish nosed the glass, his scales catching the last of the afternoon light. Sarah remembered her neighbor—Martha—talking about him, how she'd won him at a carnival, how he'd survived three apartments and two husbands. How she'd said, "The trick is not overfeeding them. They'll eat themselves to death, you know. They don't know when they're full."

"What if we're overfeeding something?" Sarah said softly. "What if we're just consuming—work, vitamins, routine—because we're hungry for something real?"

Mark set down the vitamin bottle. The cat jumped onto the counter, nudging his hand. He scratched behind her ears, something tender in the gesture.

"Martha's dead, Sarah. I looked it up yesterday. Heart attack. She was forty-two." His voice cracked. "And we're fighting about vitamins and feeling like zombies while her fish is just swimming in circles, not even knowing she's gone."

The orange light deepened toward sunset. Sarah crossed the kitchen and wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder. He held her back, desperate and solid.

"We're still here," she whispered. "That's something."

"Is it enough?"

"I don't know." She pulled back slightly, looking at him. "But we can figure it out. Not tonight. But we can figure it out."

Barry swam to the front of his bowl, mouth opening and closing in the gathering dark. Tomorrow, Sarah decided, she'd buy him a companion. Everything survived better with company.