The Goldfish Bowl

The apartment was too quiet without Marcus. I found myself standing before the empty tank, watching the last goldfish—Barnaby—drift through illuminated water like a question I couldn't answer. He'd been Marcus's idea, something about low-maintenance companionship. Now he was my roommate in the wreckage of a seven-year relationship that had ended not with fireworks but with a Sunday morning conversation about cereal brands and the realization that we'd become strangers who shared a bed.

My mother called that evening. She always did, as if timing it to when I was most vulnerable to her particular brand of concern. 'You're not eating properly,' she said, not asking. 'I can hear it in your voice. You need iron. Spinach.' She said the word like it was both prayer and accusation, as if leafy greens could fix the hollow space in my chest where my future used to be.

I hung up promising to visit more often. The lie tasted familiar on my tongue, comfortable as an old sweater. That's when I noticed the cat—a ragged tom that had been haunting our fire escape for months—watching me through the kitchen window. Marcus had wanted to adopt him. I'd refused. Another compromise I'd made, another line I'd drawn that didn't matter anymore.

'The cable's out,' I said to the empty room. Then realized I was talking to a cat that wasn't mine, Barnaby swimming in solitary circles behind me, the television screen dark as all the promises Marcus had made about forever. The connection between us had been flickering for years, but I'd pretended not to notice. I'd learned to live in the static.

That night, I dreamed I was swimming through our apartment, furniture floating past like underwater debris. Marcus was there, drifting away from me through dark water, and I couldn't reach him. I woke with salt on my face—tears or ocean, I couldn't tell anymore.

The next morning, I opened the window to the cat. He leaped onto the sill with effortless grace, regarding me with amber eyes that seemed to know everything about abandonment. I poured him a bowl of the expensive salmon food Marcus had bought before leaving. Barnaby swam to the front of his tank as if watching this negotiation with loneliness.

'Stay,' I whispered, and the cat did.