Riddles in the Sand

The Sphinx stared at me with those ancient, limestone eyes, and I wanted to scream at its silence. Three weeks ago, Marcus would've been standing beside me, making terrible jokes about the monument's missing nose, his iPhone capturing every moment with practiced enthusiasm.

Now the phone buzzed in my pocket—his last unanswered messages glowing through the fabric like embers. "Are we okay?" "Call me?" "I don't understand why you're doing this."

The guide was explaining how the Sphinx posed riddles to travelers, devouring those who failed. I'd always thought friendship operated on similar principles—the unanswerable questions, the tests of loyalty, the fear that one wrong answer could dissolve everything.

Marcus and I had built something like a pyramid over twenty years: solid, geometric, seemingly eternal. But pyramids were just elaborate gravestones, weren't they? Monuments to dead kings, not living relationships. Underneath the grand exterior was nothing but darkness and disappointment.

"What do you think?" the guide asked. I wasn't sure what he meant—the riddle, the monument, or the way I kept checking my phone like a nervous tic.

My iPhone illuminated the Sphinx's weathered face. Recent photo: Marcus at some bar, arm draped around some woman I didn't recognize. He looked radiant, transformed in a way I'd never seen him look with me.

The realization hit me like desert heat. I wasn't guarding a friendship's mysteries—I was haunting its ruins. Marcus had moved on, but I'd stayed behind, posing riddles to ghosts.

I typed three words and pressed send: "No more riddles."

Then I turned off the phone. The Sphinx said nothing, but for the first time, its silence felt like wisdom rather than judgment. Some answers aren't found. They're simply outgrown.