Riddles at Midnight

The swimming pool at midnight was still, the water a black mirror reflecting the moon's pale eye. Elena stood at the edge, watching Mark drift on his back. They'd been married twelve years, and somewhere along the way, they'd forgotten how to speak to each other without the weight of unsaid things pressing against their words.

"I'm leaving," she said, the words tasting like iron.

Mark stopped swimming. He treaded water, looking up at her. "When?"

"Friday."

"Why?"

She thought of the dinner she'd made earlier—spinach wilting in the pan, its green flesh surrendering to heat just as she had, year after year. "Because I've become a riddle without an answer, Mark. Like the sphinx. I've been asking myself who I am for so long that I've forgotten there was ever a question."

He swam to the ladder, hauled himself out. Water dripped from his body, each drop a tiny silver coin paying for their shared history. "That's not a reason. That's poetry."

"What's the difference?"

"A reason has a solution. Poetry just needs to be felt."

He moved past her into the house. Elena looked at the pool again—water still black, still silent, still waiting.

She thought about spinach wilting in its pan. She thought about the sphinx, its riddle unanswered for millennia. She thought about swimming—how you could slice through water, elegant and streamlined, while underneath, your limbs churned violently, desperate to keep you from drowning.

Inside, Mark was making coffee. The smell drifted through the open door, bitter and familiar.

Elena dove into the pool.

The water was shockingly cold. It filled her ears, her nose, the hollows of her eyes. She stayed under, suspended in that silent dark world where there was no air, no words. Then she broke the surface, gasping.

Mark stood at the door, holding two mugs. "Friday," he said. "That's three days."

"Yes."

"I'll pack."

"No. Don't pack."

"Then what?"

"Then make me some of that coffee. And tell me something true."

Mark set the mugs on the patio table. "I never liked spinach," he said. "Not even that first dinner, when your mother made spanakopita and I ate three servings to impress you. I've always hated it."

Elena laughed, surprising herself. "That's your truth? You've been faking it for twelve years?"

"It's a start."

She picked up the mug. It was warm against her wet hands. "What's the riddle?"

"The sphinx? What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening. If you couldn't answer, it ate you alive."

Elena sipped the coffee. It was bitter and hot. "Man. We crawl, we walk, we lean. That's not a riddle. That's biology."

"The answer was always something that would die anyway."

Elena looked at the pool again, at the water that was still and dark and waiting. She thought about swimming in it, how it felt both like surrender and like survival.

"Friday," she said.

"Friday."

They sat there as the moon moved across the sky, two people who had forgotten how to speak, beginning to remember what words were for.