Sphinx on the Screen

Marsha stared at her iPhone, the blue light washing over her face in the dark bedroom. Another notification. Another email from work. Another reason not to sleep.

She rose at 5 AM to run, setting a tempo of 6 minutes per mile, each footstrike a prayer to a god she'd stopped believing in. Somewhere between mile three and the realization that Mark hadn't looked her in the eye for weeks, she slowed at a convenience store.

The clerk offered her a fluorescent orange energy drink and a compliment on her discipline. Marsha bought a baseball cap from the rack instead—something about the familiar curve of the brim reminded her of Sunday afternoons when Mark would explain pitching statistics, his face animated in ways she hadn't seen lately.

That evening, Mark swallowed his evening vitamin supplements without comment. The ritual had become its own language—this nightly choreography of pills and water, the silent marking of another day survived.

"You're a sphinx," she said suddenly.

Mark paused, the water glass halfway to his mouth. "What?"

"You sit there. Inscrutable. Like you're guarding some ancient riddle I'm supposed to solve, except you won't tell me what the riddle IS."

Mark set down the glass. His phone chimed—work, always work—and the moment fractured.

She wanted to scream: we used to talk about everything. Now I'm running five miles daily just to feel something, anything, while you're becoming a stranger in our king-sized bed.

"Marsha." Mark's voice was soft. "I lost my job three weeks ago."

The room went still. All this time, she'd thought his silence was withdrawal. Instead, it had been shame—a sphinx's riddle after all, but one with no noble answer, just the quiet erosion of dignity.

She reached for his hand across the dinner table, their fingers finding each other like rediscovering a map they'd both forgotten how to read.