What Goldfish Remember

Emma had been running for forty-five minutes when her phone buzzed with the notification she'd been dreading for three years. Mark's number. The friend who'd stopped speaking to her the day after the funeral, when she'd made an inappropriate joke about the open casket being 'finally honest about his drinking.'

She kept running, her sneakers slapping the pavement in a rhythm that matched the thudding of her heart. The night air was thick with humidity, and she could feel sweat dripping down her spine like guilty fingers.

They'd bought the goldfish together on a Tuesday, impulsive and hungover, some errand run after Aaron's death that now felt surreal in hindsight. A carnival prize that neither of them wanted. 'It's just a fish,' Mark had said, but his voice cracked. 'Nothing lives forever.'

Emma stopped at the edge of the park, bending over to catch her breath, hands on her knees. She hadn't thought about that goldfish in months. She'd given it to her sister after a week, unable to bear its blank stare, its constant open-mouthed surprise at existence. It died two years later, her sister had told her. They buried it in a houseplant.

Her phone buzzed again. 'Can we talk?'

Emma walked home slowly, her cooling skin raising goosebumps on her arms. She stopped at the bodega on the corner and bought a bag of spinach, unsure why until she got home and realized she was making the same salad Mark had made the night they'd met—a potluck where he'd proudly announced his 'adult salad' with spinach and walnuts, looking so pleased with himself she'd wanted to kiss him immediately. She'd waited three weeks.

She stood in her kitchen now, rinsing the spinach under cold water, watching the leaves turn dark and heavy in the colander. Water swirled down the drain. She thought about goldfish and their supposed three-second memory, how they kept swimming the same patterns, forgetting they'd already been here, done this. Maybe that was the real tragedy—not that everything died, but that we lived long enough to remember it all.

Her phone lit up on the counter. Mark again. 'I'm at that bar on 5th. The one with the terrible karaoke. If you want.'

Emma turned off the water. She stared at the dripping spinach, the condensation on her water glass, the evidence of a life that kept moving forward even when she didn't want it to. She picked up her phone and typed, 'Give me 20 minutes.'

She didn't know if she forgave him. She didn't know if she ever could. But she knew that goldfish actually remembered things far longer than people gave them credit for, and maybe she was tired of pretending otherwise. She dried her hands on a towel and reached for her shoes.