What We Keep Alive

The goldfish had been floating sideways for three days. Marcus stood before the bowl, coffee in hand, watching its gills move in that agonizingly slow rhythm—not dead, not alive. Like everything else in this apartment since Elena left.

"You're a zombie," she'd said, packing her final box. Not angry, just tired. "You've been one for years. I can't live with someone who's already gone."

He'd wanted to argue, but the truth was she wasn't wrong. The corporate law grind had stripped him hollow. Fourteen-hour days reviewing contracts, eating takeout at his desk, forgetting anniversaries, forgetting himself. He moved through his life on autopilot, a biological machine running someone else's code.

Now the apartment was quiet. The goldfish—a carnival prize from their first date, absurdly named Captain—was the last living thing she'd left behind. Marcus dropped a pinch of food into the bowl. Captain didn't surface.

His phone buzzed: a reminder about the firm's softball game. He'd been roped into playing, a pathetic attempt at team building. He grabbed his glove from the closet, where it had sat since college. The leather was stiff, unnused. Baseball had been his father's domain—weekend games, pressure, the sharp crack of the bat, the way his dad's approval always felt conditional on performance. Marcus had quit after high school.

He opened the refrigerator for breakfast and stared at a wilting bag of spinach. Elena had bought it. She'd been trying to get them to eat better, to live better, to feel something besides exhaustion. He took out a handful, chewed it raw standing over the sink. It tasted like regret and metal.

"Fuck this," Marcus said aloud. The words felt foreign in his mouth, like a language he'd forgotten.

He returned to the fishbowl. Captain was still breathing, barely. Marcus remembered reading about goldfish memory—three seconds, eight seconds, a myth anyway. But what did it matter? The fish kept swimming. It didn't know it was dying in a glass prison on a counter in a city that didn't care if it lived or died.

Marcus took the bowl outside. The morning air was cool, cleaner than the apartment's stale circulation. He walked to the small pond in the complex's courtyard—manicured, artificial, but water nonetheless. His hands shook as he tipped the bowl.

Captain righted himself instantly, darting into the depths. A trick of the light or genuine revival, Marcus couldn't tell.

"Go," he whispered. "Be alive somewhere."

His phone buzzed again. The game. He typed back: Not coming in today. Then: Taking the day. Then, finally, he quit.

The spinach still sat on the counter. Marcus wasn't hungry anymore. For the first time in years, he was starving.