What Remains in the Water

The coaxial cable lay severed on the floor like a dead snake, its copper entrails exposed where she'd ripped it from the wall during last night's fight. Thomas stepped over it carefully, the way he'd learned to navigate everything in their apartment lately—with caution and without looking directly at it.

In the kitchen, a bag of spinach liquefied in the crisper drawer. He'd bought it three weeks ago, back when they still made plans to cook together, back when he believed in the version of themselves that hosted dinner parties and talked about someday. Now the green sludge mocked him from behind the glass, another living thing that had died waiting for attention neither of them could spare.

She'd taken her goldfish—that absurd, narcissistic gift he'd given her on their second anniversary, when he thought being clever was the same as being thoughtful. The bowl sat empty on the windowsill, a glass mouth gasping for nothing. He wondered if the fish would outlive them, swimming in circles in some new apartment, learning to love a different person's face hovering above the water.

Her hair still clogged the shower drain. Red-gold threads that had been part of his hands, his mouth, his mornings for three years. He should clean it. He should package it with the rest of her things—the box by the door that held her toothbrush and the novel she'd never finished. But every time he tried, his fingers hovered over the tangled mat and stopped. Some acts felt too intimate, even now. Even after she'd looked at him across their destroyed living room and said, I think I've forgotten how to want you.

He was swimming toward the surface now, finally. The slow, pressure-filled ascent from the depths where he'd been drowning without realizing it. The air up here was thin and strange, but it was air.

Outside, the neighbor's dog barked at something invisible. Somewhere, she was driving away with a fish in a jar and a box of things she hadn't bothered to take. Thomas sat on the edge of the tub and pulled the hair from the drain, one long strand at a time, and let himself begin to mourn.