What the Goldfish Remembers

The goldfish circled his bowl in the same relentless loop as my thoughts. Douglas had been gone three weeks, and yet his presence lingered like a stubborn stain—the cable knit sweater he'd left draped over the armchair, the half-read book on his bedside table, the papaya rotting on the counter because neither of us had the heart to eat it after we bought it together, drunk on that false optimism of couples who think joint purchases can bind them forever.

I stood at the sink, rinsing spinach for a dinner I had no appetite to eat. The leaves clung to my hands like wet regrets. Douglas used to say I overthought everything, that I was like a goldfish with a three-second memory, forgetting how to be happy because I was too busy analyzing the mechanics of joy.

'You think yourself out of feeling,' he'd said, the night he left. 'Some things just are.'

The papaya had turned soft and fermented sweet. I should have thrown it out days ago. Instead, I let it sit there, a small monument to our shared failure, to the way we'd let everything spoil rather than confront what was rotting between us.

The fish watched me with his unblinking eye. He'd outlasted two relationships, this fish. Maybe Douglas had a point about memory. Maybe the trick wasn't to hold on but to keep swimming, to let the water carry you around and around until the scenery looked new again.

I dropped the spinach into the pan. It hissed and collapsed in on itself, surrendering to heat the way I never had. Douglas wanted simplicity; I gave him complexity. He wanted to be; I wanted to understand.

Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I would throw out the papaya. I would call the cable company and switch the account to my name. I would feed the fish something other than the cheap flakes Douglas had always bought.

But tonight, I watched the goldfish complete another circle, and I let myself remember that some things—love, loss, the particular way Douglas said my name like it was a question he was still trying to answer—some things don't need understanding. They just need to be felt, completely, before they can be let go.