The Last Papaya Summer

The goldfish died three days after you left.

I found it floating belly-up in the bowl on your nightstand, its orange scales catching the morning light in a way that felt deliberate, performative almost. For a week, I'd been feeding it. For a week, I'd been keeping your apartment exactly as you'd left it—half-empty coffee mug on the coaster, your paperback spine-broken on page 147, the smell of your papaya shampoo slowly fading from the bathroom.

You loved papaya. Loved it with an intensity that made me jealous sometimes, the way you'd close your eyes eating it, juices running down your chin, like you were experiencing something I couldn't access. That last morning, you'd cut one open while I watched from the doorway, still wearing my baseball jersey from the game the night before. We'd lost. You'd made fun of me for sulking, then sliced me a piece, held it to my lips. Your fingers smelled like citrus and the hair product you always stole from me.

"Eat," you'd said. "Life's too short for bad moods over baseball."

You left two hours later. Not died—left. Packed your things in that silent way people do when they've been grieving a relationship long before the actual end. I'd been a zombie moving through our days together, present but somewhere else entirely. You'd been the one feeling it, the loneliness of being with someone who'd already checked out.

The goldfish was yours. A carnival prize from our first date. I'd won it for you, that same baseball jersey on, and you'd laughed and named it Lucky because we both knew carnival fish died within weeks. It lasted three years.

I flushed it, then stood in the bathroom and caught my reflection in the mirror. My hair was getting long. You'd been telling me to cut it for months. I looked tired in a way that went beyond sleep—a spiritual exhaustion, the kind that comes from realizing you've become the person you swore you wouldn't.

The papaya on the counter was ripe. I cut it open, scooped out the seeds, and ate it standing at the sink, letting the juice run down my chin like you used to do. For a second, in that sticky sweetness, I could almost feel you there. Then it passed, and I was just another person eating fruit alone in an apartment that was too quiet, finally learning to be present in my own life.