The Last Message

The goldfish swam in endless circles around its bowl, oblivious to the way Maya's world had just tilted on its axis. She watched its orange scales flash in the late afternoon light, thinking how appropriate—that tiny, contained existence was exactly what her life had become.

Her iphone buzzed on the kitchen counter, lighting up with another notification from David. She'd stopped reading them an hour ago when she'd found the text meant for someone else—a confession of love sent to the wrong number, or maybe the right one, depending on how you looked at it.

Maya caught her reflection in the hallway mirror. The hat she'd worn to work—her armor against corporate presentations and pyramid schemes of office politics—sat askew on her head. Strands of hair had escaped throughout the day, framing her face in wild defiance of the neat professional she was supposed to be.

"Thirty-four years old," she whispered to her reflection, "and still playing dress-up."

She'd met David at that terrible corporate retreat last year, under a pyramid-shaped tent where they'd both gotten too drunk on cheap wine and ambition. He'd told her she had beautiful hair, that he loved the way her mind worked. She'd believed him, wanted to believe him, because wanting was easier than being alone.

The goldfish bumped its nose against the glass, reminding her of David's endless circling around the truth—never quite committing, never quite leaving, just swimming in the safe shallows of "we're taking it slow" and "it's complicated with my wife.""

"Ex-wife," he'd corrected every time, though they'd been divorced two years and he still let her control their schedule, their conversations, their everything.

Maya's phone lit up again: "Can we talk?"

She thought about the pyramid scheme her life had become—investing emotions, hoping for returns that never materialized. The goldfish would have more dignity in its death than she'd had in this relationship.

She pulled off her hat and shook out her hair. Then she picked up her phone, blocked David's number, and deleted every message, every photo, every digital trace of him.

The goldfish kept swimming. Maya finally started living.