What We Keep

The spinach wilts in the colander, dark greens surrendering to the heat of the kitchen I can't seem to escape. Two years since David left, and I still shop for two, still reach for the wine glasses that hang too high on their hooks, still cook portions that mock me from the refrigerator. The apartment smells of garlic and olive oil and the particular kind of loneliness that settles in your bones when you realize you've become someone who talks to their pets.

The goldfish—Bubbles, absurdly named by David during that first year when everything was charming and nothing was permanent—circles his bowl in the corner. His orange scales flash in the evening light, his mouth opening and closing in that endless, silent prayer. He's survived three boyfriends, two apartments, and my mother's death. Sometimes I think he knows more than he should.

My iPhone vibrates against the granite countertop. The screen lights up: His name. I've programmed it differently now, stripped away the old heart emoji, the photo I couldn't bring myself to delete for eight months. Now it's just text, clinical and gray. My thumb hovers. I could answer. Could let him back in, like I did last time, and the time before that. Some women collect shoes; I collect second chances that never quite fit.

The spinach sizzles when I add it to the pan. Steam rises, carrying with it the memory of Sunday mornings, coffee and newspapers spread across this table, his hands warm against my back as he reached for the salt. We used to laugh at couples who'd been married forever, the ones who sat in restaurants saying nothing. We swore we'd never become them.

Bubbles circles again, and suddenly it's not funny anymore—how I'm the one ending up alone, how goldfish live longer than promises, how I'm thirty-five years old and the most reliable relationship in my life is with a creature who doesn't even know I exist.

The phone stops vibrating. Dark again. I dish up the spinach, steam clouding my glasses, and carry my plate to the window where the city spreads out below me. Somewhere down there, he's probably with someone new. Someone who doesn't cook too much, who doesn't keep phone numbers they shouldn't, who doesn't see ghosts in every corner of an apartment that's too big for one person.

Bubbles catches my eye from across the room. His mouth opens, closes, opens again. Maybe he's hungry. Maybe he's trying to tell me something about the nature of living in small spaces, of circling the same motions, of staying afloat in water that's always changing temperature.

I take a bite of spinach. It's overcooked, bitter, exactly like I deserve.