What Remains in the Bowl

Maya stands at the counter each morning with her orange **vitamin** tablet, the same ritual she and Elena used to joke about — their tiny insurance against mortality, taken with water they pretended was champagne. Elena's been gone three months now. Not dead. Just gone. A promotion in Singapore, a life that no longer had room for Tuesday wine nights and speculative conversations about the future.

The silence of the apartment has settled into Maya's bones like damp cold. She passes **Elena's** goldfish bowl — rescued from the curb, swimming in indifferent circles — and sprinkles flakes that turn the water cloudy. She keeps meaning to ask Elena if she wants it back, but the messages go unanswered, then read, then unanswered again. The slow fade of a **friend** who once knew her coffee order, her fear of flying, the exact cadence of her laugh when she was holding something back.

Tonight, on the fire escape, Maya sees a **fox**. Red coat luminous against the gray alley, it pauses, meets her gaze through the glass. Something wild and unbothered, making its own way through a city that wasn't built for it. She presses her palm to the cold window. The fox dips its head once, almost acknowledgment, then slips into darkness.

The goldfish breaks the surface, gasping. Maya feeds it double.

Some things learn to swim in whatever bowl they're given. Some things chew through the walls. And some things — some friendships, some selves — you thought were architecture turn out to be weather instead. You don't get to keep them. You just get to say: I stood in that rain once. It was beautiful. Now my hair is wet.