The Lightning Strike

The goldfish floated at the top of the bowl, its orange scales catching the last light of day. Sarah hadn't fed it in three weeks. Neither had Mark. It had become something they ignored, like the unread books on the nightstand, like the conversations that died before they began.

Lightning cracked the sky outside, sudden and violent, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the apartment's stale air. Mark stood at the window, his silhouette fractured by the flash. He'd been standing there for twenty minutes.

"We should talk about the lease," Sarah said, her voice barely above the thunder's rumble. "It's up next month."

Mark turned. His hair — once thick, now thinning at the temples — stuck up in the back where he'd been running his fingers through it. A nervous habit she'd found endearing seven years ago, exhausting three years ago, and now just pathetic.

"What's there to talk about?" The exhaustion in his voice matched the slump of his shoulders. "We both know the answer."

She looked at the goldfish again. It was still moving, just barely. A tiny mouth opening and closing at the water's surface.

"Remember when we bought it?" she said. "That pet store in Brooklyn. You said it would be easy. Something to take care of together."

"We were twenty-four, Sarah. We thought a lot of things would be easy."

Lightning struck again, closer this time. The room flared white, stark and unforgiving. In that frozen moment, she saw everything: the coffee mug stained with rings, the stack of unopened mail, the hollows under his eyes, the way his hands hung useless at his sides.

She crossed the room and reached for him. Her fingers found the hair at the nape of his neck, soft and familiar. This was the intimacy they still had — this casual touch, this muscle memory of tenderness that refused to die even as everything else had.

Mark leaned into her hand, closed his eyes. "I'm sorry,"

he whispered.

"Me too."

They stood like that as the storm broke open, rain hammering against the glass, drowning out the silence between them. The goldfish rose to the surface one last time, its mouth opening in a silent gasp, and then it didn't move again. Some things, Sarah thought, you let die. Some things, you just watch happen.