The Weight of Living Things

Maya sat on the fire escape of her Brooklyn apartment, watching the storm roll in. Her palm rested against the cold metal railing, the lines of her hand seeming to echo the grid of the city below. Somewhere in the distance, lightning fractured the sky—a violent, beautiful crack that illuminated everything for half a second before plunging the world back into gray.

She thought about Elias. Three years ago today, they'd stood on this same fire escape, drunk on cheap wine and the terrifying electricity between them. He'd taken her hand, traced the life line with his thumb, and said, "I see something good here." She'd laughed, told him palm reading was bullshit, but she'd leaned into his touch anyway.

Now he was married to someone else—a woman who organized her books by color and probably believed in astrology.

Maya's phone buzzed. A text from her mother: Your father's surgery went well. The goldfish is still alive, by the way. I don't know how.

The goldfish. The one Maya had won at a carnival when she was twelve, the one her mother had kept alive through college, through Maya's move to the city, through her father's heart attack last year. That fucking fish. Sometimes she felt like her whole family was just tending to things that refused to die, keeping them alive out of spite or obligation or love—she could never tell which was which anymore.

Another flash of lightning. This time she counted the seconds. One, two, three—thunder rattled the fire escape. The storm was moving closer.

Her neighbor's door opened below. A woman stepped out, smoking a cigarette in the rain. Maya had seen her around—tall, sharp features, always alone. The woman looked up and their eyes met through the metal grating.

"Beautiful night to watch the world end," the woman called up.

Maya laughed before she could stop herself. "Come on up."

As the woman climbed the stairs, Maya thought about goldfish and their supposed three-second memories. Maybe that was the trick. Maybe you just had to keep forgetting, keep swimming to the next side of the bowl, keep letting things be new. Or maybe you had to hold on, persist like some mutant house fish, survive on whatever scraps of light came through.

The woman sat beside her, close enough that Maya could smell rain and tobacco and something like jasmine. "I'm Sarah."

"Maya."

They watched the storm together in silence until lightning struck close enough that the air tasted like metal. Sarah's hand found Maya's in the darkness, palm against palm, and Maya thought, right or wrong, this moment at least was hers.