What the Lightning Took

The lightning had split the sky in two the night Mara died, and some part of me had split with it. Three months later, I stood in her apartment, surrounded by cardboard boxes and the accumulated debris of a life cut short at thirty-four.

Her hair brush still sat on the bathroom counter — those long, dark strands she'd complained about but I'd loved running my fingers through. I pressed the bristles to my cheek, half-expecting to catch her scent, but there was only stale dust and the faint chemical smell of the building's old pipes.

The goldfish, absurdly, was still alive. Glass blinked at me from its bowl on the windowsill, that same orange comet swimming in endless circles. Mara had won it at a carnival on our first date, that summer we spent playing baseball in the park every Sunday. She couldn't throw to save her life, but she'd laugh — that full-bodied laugh that made strangers turn their heads — whenever I teased her about pitching like a wounded duck.

"We're not friends anymore," she'd shout, grabbing the glove and stalking toward home plate, hair wild in the humidity. "We're rivals. Rivals who make out after the game."

That was seven years ago. Somewhere along the way, the baseball games stopped. The goldfish outlasted them all.

I thought about flushing him. It seemed cruel, in a way, to keep something swimming in circles when its whole world had been packed into boxes. But then I remembered what she'd said that last time we sat on her fire escape, watching summer storms gather over the city.

"Memory's like a goldfish bowl," she'd said, cigarette glowing between her fingers. "You think you're seeing everything, but you're really just going in loops, forgetting what you saw five seconds ago."

I'd laughed. "You're morbid tonight."

"I'm realistic." She'd ashed her cigarette, turning to face me. "If something happened to me, would you remember me right? Or just the convenient version?"

I hadn't answered. I'd kissed her instead, and she'd tasted like wine and something electric, like lightning about to strike.

Now I stared at the goldfish, at the way it surfaced to gulp air, and realized she was right. I was already forgetting the sound of her real laugh, replacing it with a convenient echo. I was forgetting how she'd looked that last morning, hair mussed from sleep, murmuring about coffee before her shift.

The friend who'd known the answer was gone. The goldfish kept swimming, memory in motion, going nowhere and everywhere all at once.