What the Lightning Leaves

The apartment felt too large after Maya died. That was the joke, wasn't it? Two bedrooms for one person who'd stopped sleeping in the bedroom altogether.

I sat on the couch with a glass of wine, watching lightning fissure the sky outside. Each flash illuminated the things I couldn't bring myself to move: her yellow rain hat hanging by the door, the bowl where Barnaby—the most neurotic golden retriever in existence—used to curl his massive body. He'd been dead six months, but I still tripped over his memory like phantom furniture.

"You're hoarding grief," my sister had said during her last visit, gesturing at the goldfish bowl on the counter. "You can't even keep a goldfish alive, Marcus."

She wasn't wrong. The goldfish was the third one I'd bought since the funeral. The first two had died within weeks—silent, floating judgments of my capacity to keep anything alive. This one, a shimmering orange comet with a perpetually surprised expression, had survived three months. I found myself talking to it sometimes.

"She would've found this funny," I told the fish. "Us. Alone in this apartment. She hated goldfish. Said they were just karma for people who weren't ready for real responsibility."

The lightning flashed again, closer this time. The thunder came almost immediately, rattling the windowpanes. I thought about the night Maya and I had adopted Barnaby from that shelter in Queens, how it had stormed just like this. She'd worn that ridiculous yellow hat, grinning like she'd just won the lottery while the dog shook between us in the car.

"You can't save everything," she'd told me once, when I wanted to adopt every stray we passed. "You have to choose what matters."

I looked at the goldfish swimming in its endless circles, at the empty space where the dog's bed used to be, at the hat still hanging by the door like she might come back and claim it any minute. I realized I'd been trying to save everything—the way she laughed, the weight of her hand in mine, the future we'd talked about like it was a promise instead of a possibility.

The lightning struck so close the room whited out. For a second, I could almost see her standing there in her yellow hat, grinning like she'd just told the universe a joke it wasn't in on.

"You don't have to choose," she would say. "But you do have to let go."

The fish swam to the surface, mouth opening and closing in the silence. I stood up and walked to the door, reached for the hat. My hand hovered. Letting go wasn't the same as forgetting.

I left the hat where it was. Instead, I poured another glass of wine and turned on the lamp against the dark. Some things you keep. Some things you release. The trick was knowing which was which.