What We Feed

The apartment felt different after Sarah left—smaller, somehow, though nothing had changed but the absence of her presence. I found myself moving through rooms like a ghost haunting my own life, performing rituals that had once been shared, now solitary.

The cat, Bast, padded silently through the hallway, her green eyes judging me from doorframes. She'd been Sarah's cat, really—Sarah who'd rescued her from a shelter during that first brutal winter we spent together. Now Bast tolerated my existence, accepted my offerings of tuna and chin scratches with the dignified reluctance of a deposed queen granting audience to a usurper. I wondered if animals could sense the way love curdled into something else, something nameless and heavy.

The goldfish, still nameless after three years, circled his bowl in the kitchen. Sarah had bought him on impulse during one of those Sunday morning wandering sessions we used to do—coffee, thrift stores, whatever caught our eye. Now his silent swimming felt like an accusation. I fed him every morning, the flakes scattering across the water's surface like tiny prayers, but he never seemed grateful. Just kept swimming, oblivious to the way everything had fractured.

I'd started taking a vitamin D supplement after she left—the "sunshine vitamin," the label promised. Something about mood support, bone health, a promise of better things. It felt like swallowing hope in gelatin form, like maybe if I could get the chemistry right, everything else would follow. The bottle sat on the counter next to the goldfish, two small vessels of impossible promises.

Then came the dog.

He appeared on a Tuesday evening during that terrible hour when the sky turns the color of a bruise. A golden retriever mix, maybe, with fur the color of maple syrup and eyes that seemed to hold all the loneliness in the world. He sat on the fire escape outside my window, rain flattening his fur against his ribs, and when I opened the window to shoo him away, he just looked at me.

Just looked. Like he knew.

I let him in. He shook rainwater onto my kitchen floor, tracking mud across the linoleum, and then he curled up next to the cat's bed like he'd always belonged there. Bast stared at him with undisguised horror, her tail twitching.

"Sorry," I told her. "I'm garbage at this too."

The dog, whose collar bore the name "Cosmo," stayed. Not because I was heroic or kind, but because I was lonely enough to let something else need me. He slept at the foot of my bed, breathing in that heavy rhythm that meant I wasn't entirely alone in the dark. He woke me at 6 AM with a wet nose to the face, demanding walks, demanding presence, demanding that I get up and move through the world.

Some mornings, while Cosmo sniffed eagerly at the world and Bast watched with aristocratic disdain from the window, I'd stand at the counter and swallow my vitamin with tap water. I'd feed the goldfish. I'd feel the small, heavy weight of caring for living things, how it could both anchor you and drown you.

I called Sarah once, while Cosmo was sleeping at my feet. "I have a dog now," I told her phone's voicemail. "And the cat still hates me. The fish is still swimming. I'm taking vitamins. I think I'm supposed to be okay."

She didn't call back.

That was okay. Some things, like goldfish and resentment and love, just keep swimming. You feed them what you can, and you hope it's enough, and you learn to live with the hunger that never quite goes away.