What the Goldfish Knows

The goldfish had been watching her for three years. Eleanor felt its judgment every morning as she sprinkled vitamin flakes into its bowl, her hands trembling from the cocktail of supplements she swallowed daily—B12 for energy, D3 for the winter darkness, magnesium for the anxiety that pressed against her ribs like a second skeleton.

She moved through her apartment like a zombie, haunting her own life. Since David left, taking the cable box with him, she'd learned to exist without the narcotic comfort of background noise. The silence had teeth.

Mittens, David's cat, had refused to leave with him. The animal sat sentinel outside the fishbowl, tail flicking with predatory indifference, as if deciding whether to extend mercy or violence. Sometimes Eleanor thought the cat understood more than she did.

"He's not coming back," she told the goldfish. Its mouth opened and closed, bubbles rising like prayers she'd stopped saying.

The vitamin bottle on her counter promised wellness. She swallowed them religiously, even as she felt herself hollowing out, becoming something translucent and terrified, swimming in circles too small for her body.

What the goldfish knew: eventually you stop seeing the glass. You forget there was ever anything beyond it.

Eleanor pressed her forehead against the cool window. Below, the city carried on without her. She imagined David somewhere with his cable restored, his nights filled with the comfort of other people's scripted lives.

Mittens leaped onto the counter, staring at her with ancient eyes. The cat knew something about survival that she hadn't yet learned.

She opened the vitamin bottle and tipped the contents into her palm. Forty small promises of a life she might still want.

The goldfish swam to the surface, waiting.

Eleanor flushed the vitamins down the toilet, then called the cable company. A human voice answered. She asked to schedule installation.

Tomorrow she would buy the cat better food. She would find a larger bowl. She would begin again, in increments, in the small revolutions that no one else would notice.

But tonight, she watched the fish swim through its impossible small world, and understood that survival was its own kind of miracle.