What Remains in the Water

The coaxial cable lay severed behind the television set, a copper snake she had'd cut through during her final, dramatic exit. Three weeks later, Elena still hadn't called to have it reconnected. The silence in the apartment was preferable to the alternative: the fillings-in of silence that couples manufacture when they've run out of things to say.

She stood before the open refrigerator at 2 AM, surveying the evidence of neglect. A bag of spinach had liquefied into a dark green sludge in the crisper drawer—metaphor too obvious to ignore. Their shared organic vegetable box delivery continued arriving weekly, a subscription neither had cancelled. Another thing they'd forgotten to discuss in the end.

Barnaby, Marcus's orange tabby, wound himself between her ankles, purring with entitlement. Marcus had left the cat, claiming his new place didn't allow pets. Elena knew better: he'd left the cat because leaving the cat meant leaving Elena with something alive that needed her. It was a kindness delivered as cruelty, or vice versa.

She wandered into the study where the goldfish bowl sat on the windowsill. Marcus had won the fish at a carnival three years ago, some ridiculous stunt where he'd shouted about being the only person who could keep something alive. The goldfish—stupidly named Lucky—should have died within weeks. That was the joke. Instead, it kept swimming, mouth opening and closing in its endless silent plea, scales dulling over time but never surrendering.

The cat jumped onto the desk and regarded the fish with predatory interest. Elena watched them both in the streetlight's glow: one creature that would kill without understanding why, another that lived without understanding how. Somewhere between predator and prey, between the spinach rotting in the refrigerator and the cable that carried no signal, there was a life to be built from the remnants.

She reached for her phone and cancelled the vegetable subscription. Small revolutions had to start somewhere. Tomorrow she'd call about the cable. The goldfish swam on, indifferent to them all, outlasting yet another ending.