What We Keep

The cat — your cat, technically, though we'd shared custody of his affection for seven years — watched me pack from his perch on the windowsill. He didn't blink when I folded your baseball jerseys, the ones from games we attended before we became strangers who shared a bed. I remembered the way you'd squeeze my hand during close innings, how your palm felt warm and certain, like everything would work out if we just believed hard enough. That was before I learned some games end in extra innings and some simply get called on account of darkness.

I found the goldfish bowl in the bathroom, its water clouded with neglect. We'd bought them on impulse during that week in Monterey, when we were drunk on seafood and the possibility that we might become people who kept things alive. Now only one remained, swimming lethargic circles in its tiny universe. I poured him into a mason jar, thinking about how we'd promised to take turns with the water changes, how the simplest chores became silent battlegrounds.

The cable company was next on my list. The automated system asked me to hold for a representative, and I found myself running in place, literally — jogging down the hallway in my socks, breathless from nothing and everything. This was the pattern now: running toward problems I couldn't solve, running away from conversations we never had, running until my lungs burned just to feel something real.

Your key in the lock. You stood in the doorway with takeout Thai, like old times, like you hadn't spent the past three nights at your sister's place. The cat jumped down and wound between your legs, traitor. You saw the box of baseball cards I'd taped shut, the mason jar with its lonely fish. 'I canceled the cable,' I said instead of everything else. You nodded like this was progress. Maybe it was. The fish swam another circle. Outside, someone ran past our building, footsteps echoing against the pavement. The world kept moving. We stood there with our elephant in the room and our Thai food getting cold and our seven years of accumulating everything and learning how to let it go.