The Goldfish in the Papaya

Elena stood at the kitchen counter, knife hovering over the ripe papaya. Its skin mottled with yellow and green, like something decaying and blooming all at once. Three years ago, on that cursed honeymoon in Bali, Marcus had fed her slices of this fruit with his fingers. Now she couldn't remember if she'd ever loved him, or if she'd just loved how he looked at her.

The goldfish bowl sat on the windowsill, its single inhabitant circling endlessly in water that needed changing. Goldie had outlasted their marriage by eight months. Elena watched the fish swim—swim, that was the word, wasn't it? Though what Goldie did was more like existing than living. Mouth opening and closing in silent repetition, same loop, same glass walls.

She felt like a zombie most days now. Not the Hollywood kind with gore and hunger, but the walking variety: something that appeared human, went through motions, arrived at work on time and smiled at the right moments, while inside, everything vital had rotted away. Her colleague Sarah had called it "quarter-life crisis" yesterday in the breakroom. Elena had nodded, coffee mug trembling in her hands.

Marcus had left her for someone who could "feel more." Those exact words, delivered over takeout Thai food while snow fell outside their Chicago apartment.

Now she sliced the papaya. The knife sank through flesh that yielded too easily, revealing black seeds inside. They clustered together like tiny secrets. She scooped them out with a spoon, watched them fall into the trash can where they'd never grow, never become anything.

Goldie swam to the surface, mouth opening. Elena dropped a piece of papaya into the bowl. The fish nosed it, indifferent, then turned away.

"You and me both," she said aloud.

The apartment was quiet. Too quiet. She'd been swimming in this silence for months, drowning in it really, but never quite reaching the bottom. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe she needed to hit bottom before she could surface again.

Tomorrow she'd call her mother. Tomorrow she'd change the fish water. Tomorrow she'd tell Sarah that no, it wasn't a quarter-life crisis, it was grief, slow and quiet as erosion. But tonight, Elena stood in the kitchen, papaya juice sticky on her fingers, watching a goldfish forget what it had never known, and felt—strangely, impossibly—that something in her chest was beginning to stir again.