What We Keep in Bowls

The goldfish had outlived her marriage. Three years since David walked out, and still Leonard swam in lazy circles, his orange scales dulling in the perpetual twilight of her apartment. Mara watched him over her morning coffee, the apartment silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and something else—a distant, persistent sound she couldn't place.

It took her twenty minutes to realize the cable was out. No morning news, no comfort noise, just her own thoughts echoing off walls she'd been meaning to paint since the divorce. Something about shade of papaya, the real estate agent had suggested when she bought the place. Warm, inviting. Now it was just peach-colored drywall that remembered everything.

She found herself at the health food store by noon, standing before an aisle of vitamins that promised fixes for things she didn't know were broken. B-12 for energy. D for mood. A woman beside her wept silently over magnesium supplements, and Mara wanted to touch her shoulder, ask what was wrong, but she didn't. Instead she bought a papaya from the produce section, its flesh bright and alien when she cut it open.

The apartment manager called at 3 PM. "You know that cable going through your wall? We've been trying to tell you—it's not connected anymore. Previous owner's account. Been dead for months."

Months. She'd been watching static for months, thinking it was just bad reception. Thinking it was her life resolving itself into noise and gray.

Mara carried the papaya to Leonard's bowl. He rose to the surface, mouth opening and closing in the same hunger he'd shown for three years. She dropped a piece of fruit into the water. It bobbed, then sank, and Leonard investigated it with grave consideration.

"We're both just waiting to be fed," she told him, and something about the way he ignored the papaya, chose instead to nose against the glass, watching nothing at all, made her laugh. It wasn't happy laughter. It was the sound you make when you realize you've been performing a routine so long you forgot there was ever a choice.

The goldfish would probably outlive her too. Some days, that felt like the only certain thing she owned.