Riddles in the Chlorinated Dark

The pool closed at ten, but Elena stayed in the water, swimming laps until her fingers pruned and the night guard's flashlight swept across the surface. She'd been doing this for weeks—ever since Marcus left his baseball glove on the nightstand with a note that said nothing and everything at once.

Tonight, something bobbed near the drain. A sphinx moth, its wings drowning in chlorinated depths. She fished it out, cupping it in her palm while its legs fluttered against her skin, frantic and hopeless.

"You're stuck too," she whispered.

The moth's golden eyes seemed to hold all the questions she couldn't ask Marcus. Why did you leave? Why that baseball glove from college? Why no real explanation, just that silent, heavy thing taking up space on the nightstand like an accusation?

She remembered the way he'd looked at her last summer, sitting beneath palm trees at his sister's wedding, drunk and saying, "You know what's funny? The sphinx asked a riddle, but no one ever asks what happens if you solve it and the answer's something you didn't want to know."

She'd laughed, tracing the lines in his palm like she might read his future there. Now she wondered if the riddle was about them all along.

The moth's wings dried slowly against her skin. Eventually it flew—awkward, weighted, but alive toward the lights above the pool deck.

Elena watched it go, then returned to the water. She didn't swim laps tonight. Just floated on her back, staring up at the sky while the pool's gentle current rocked her like a cradle, wondering if some answers were only meant to be carried by things that could survive them.