The Last things We Said

The goldfish circled its bowl in lazy figure-eights, oblivious to the fact that David had been gone for three weeks. Elena sat on the edge of the bathtub where she'd found him that morning, watching the fish she'd refused to let him buy, watching it live the life he couldn't anymore.

'Just one,' he'd said. 'Something alive in this apartment. Something that needs us.'

The bowl had been her compromise. No dogs, no cats—she'd worked too hard for this quiet, this carefully curated existence where nothing could disappoint her. Not the way her father had. Not the way David eventually would.

She stood up, knees popping, and walked to the kitchen. The bag of spinach in the crisper drawer had turned to slime, just like their marriage—slowly, quietly, without either of them noticing until it was too late. They'd eaten it raw those first months, pretending to be people who cared about antioxidants and longevity and futures they hadn't earned.

The engagement ring she'd flushed down the toilet the night he'd told her he was leaving had looked like a drowning thing. She'd felt sick afterwards, imagining it trapped in pipes, gathering filth, becoming something unrecognizable. Like love.

Outside, palm fronds rattled against the window. Their honeymoon in Cancun—his choice, his insistence—had been the first time she'd seen how he made decisions without her. That same stubbornness had eventually driven him away from her, or so his sister had said when she called to deliver the death notice.

A stroke. Massive, unexpected, final. The neurologist used words like 'thunderclap' and 'lightning strike' to describe something biological, something indifferent to poetry. Elena had found herself bitterly amused that David, who'd spent ten years leaving her, had finally found a way to leave her completely.

She'd cancelled his padel league membership that afternoon. The desk clerk had asked if she wanted to transfer it to someone else, and she'd said no. Let someone else carry him around a court, let someone else remember how he'd celebrate every point like he'd invented joy.

The goldfish surfaced, mouth opening and closing at the water's surface.

'You're going to die too,' she told it. 'Everyone dies. Everyone leaves.'

Lightning flickered across the sky, briefly illuminating the apartment they'd never made a home, and Elena realized she was crying—not for David, but for the woman she'd pretended to be while he was alive. The woman who believed she could protect herself by never needing anything, or anyone.

The fish swam another circle. Elena gathered her keys, her purse, and finally left the apartment for the last time. The goldfish would die in its bowl, the spinach would slime into nothing, the palms would keep growing, and she would learn how to live with what she'd allowed herself to become.