What Remains in the Bowl

The goldfish was still alive, somehow. Three weeks after Marcus left, and it kept swimming in its elaborate glass bowl on the counter, oblivious to the drowning silence of the apartment.

Elena stared at it over her morning coffee, nursing a hangover that had become her steady companion. Her iPhone buzzed — work, always work — and she swiped it away without looking. The bear market had claimed another victim at the firm yesterday, and the survivors walked around like zombies, hollowed out by the terror of being next. She should care. She couldn't.

The refrigerator held her full attention now. Marcus's organic spinach sat in the crisper drawer, slowly liquefying into a dark green sludge. He'd been on a health kick when he walked out — new diet, new life, new woman probably. Elena had stopped eating. She'd stopped doing much of anything except moving through rooms that still held his ghost.

She dropped the spinach container into the trash, watching the plastic seal break. Something about the way it hit the bottom unlocked something in her chest.

"You're just a fish," she whispered to the bowl.

The goldfish rose to the surface, mouth opening and closing in endless, silent supplication.

Her phone lit up again. Not work this time. Marcus: "Can I come get the rest of my things?"

Elena's thumb hovered over the screen. She thought about the spinach rotting in the drawer, the way his side of the bed had stayed cold since January, how she'd become this hollow thing moving through rooms that were too big now. The goldfish kept swimming, trapped in its glass world, unable to understand it was dying in plain sight.

She typed back: "Come tonight. Bring boxes."

Then she picked up the fishbowl and walked to the bathroom, where she tilted it over the toilet and watched the water spiral away, carrying something finally into the dark.