It was a meditation. Usually, this was where the ghosts of the marriage would start to chatter. You didn't fight hard enough for the house. You worked too much. You never listened. But the water was loud today, drowning out the internal monologue.

When I finally netted it, I didn't reach for my phone to post it. I just looked at it. Its gills pulsed with the same frantic rhythm of my own heart. In its struggle, I saw a reflection of my last year: the hooked jaw, the resistance, the exhaustion of being pulled into an environment where you can't breathe.

That evening I poured myself coffee I didn’t need and sat on the dock until the light thinned to watercolor. I thought about how middleness is not nothing; it is a wide, ambiguous place where loss and rescue happen in the same breath. I thought about the fish, how it had fought and then been given back, and a small, private smile creased the corner of my mouth.

Over time, the "catching" becomes less important than simply being on the river , which can save a life during dark, lonely times. The 2024 Vibe

By the time the divorce papers were signed in March 2024, I was hollowed out. The lawyers had taken their cuts, the furniture had been divided like a carcass, and my friends had picked sides with the efficiency of a schoolyard draft. What remained was a man, a half-empty apartment, and a fishing rod that hadn’t seen sunlight since our honeymoon.