What We Keep

The goldfish died three weeks after the funeral. Elena found it floating belly-up in the bowl they'd bought together, that ridiculous impulse purchase from the Sunday we'd decided to start trying. 'We need practice,' she'd said, pressing her forehead against my shoulder in the pet store aisle. 'If we can keep this alive, we can keep anything alive.'

We couldn't.

Now I stand in the bathroom staring at my hair in the mirror—thinning at the temples, silver threading through what used to be brown. Elena used to run her fingers through it when she couldn't sleep, claiming it calmed her. The clippers hum in my hand. I haven't cut it since she left.

Outside, something moves in the overgrown garden.

A fox stands at the edge of the patio, russet coat bright against the dying hydrangeas. It looks directly at me through the bathroom window, eyes ancient and knowing. We've seen it before—Elena used to leave out scraps, though I told her it would only come back. 'It's just hungry,' she'd say, like hunger wasn't something we understood.

The fox dips its head, picks something from the ground. A gold? No. A mouse.

I turn off the clippers. My reflection shows a man half-shorn, pathetic in his grief

Three months ago, Elena packed her things. 'I can't do this anymore,' she said, not meeting my eyes. 'The appointments, the waiting, the disappointment every month. I need to be something other than half of a couple that can't make themselves whole.'

She moved to Portland. She sends emails about her new job, her new apartment, her new life.

The fox is still there, watching me. I step onto the patio. The air is cold, autumn settling into my bones. I don't know what I'm doing—standing barefoot in the dying garden at eleven AM, half-shorn, talking to a wild animal like it might understand.

'You don't stay either,' I say.

The fox's ear twitches. Then it turns and vanishes into the hedge, leaving me alone with the ghosts of everything we tried to grow.

Back inside, the bathroom mirror shows me what I've become. I finish what I started, hair falling to the tile. Later, I'll sweep it up. Later, I'll buy another fish. Later, I'll learn to live in this house alone.

Not yet. Now, I sit on the edge of the tub and remember how her hair smelled in the mornings, before everything broke.