The fisherman found my wedding ring inside a cod

Dear Delyara, Three years ago, after my wife left, I threw my wedding ring from the pier. It was childish and theatrical, but I had been drinking and wanted the ocean to take something from me because I felt it had taken nothing compared with what I had lost. This morning, a fisherman I know came into the pub where I work and placed a ring on the counter. He said he found it inside a cod while cleaning the catch. The inscription bore our wedding date and my wife’s initials. I thought he was playing a cruel joke until he showed me a photograph of the fish. The ring is scratched, darker, and slightly bent. I phoned my ex-wife, though we have not spoken in eight months. She listened, then laughed so unexpectedly that I laughed too. For two minutes, we sounded like the couple who once believed the date inside that ring would remain important forever. She asked what I planned to do with it. I said I did not know. She suggested throwing it back. Tonight, the ring is beside the till, smelling faintly of metal and salt despite being washed. I threw it away because I wanted an ending. The sea returned it changed, as if to remind me that discarded things do not always disappear. Sometimes they travel through darkness and come back inside the body of something you intended to eat.