The Riddle of Empty Hours

Maya stared at her iPhone at 2 AM, the blue light painting her exhaustion in harsh relief. Another email from David—her boss, her lover, her mistake—asking why she'd missed the deadline. She typed and deleted three responses, her thumbs moving like they belonged to someone else.

Her apartment was a temple to her burnout: empty takeout containers, a bed that felt too big, and a sphinx she'd bought at a garage sale after her divorce. Its ceramic face stared at her from the bookshelf, its riddle carved into the base: *What walks through fire but never burns?*

"A zombie," she whispered. That's what she'd become. Not the movie kind—rotting and ravenous—but the office kind: hollowed out by incremental compromises, moving through her days on muscle memory and caffeine. She'd slept with David because she was lonely. She'd stayed because she was afraid. She'd stopped writing poetry because she'd stopped believing words could save her.

Her phone chimed. A calendar notification: *Vitamin D appointment.* Dr. Patel had warned her three months ago that her levels were critically low. "You're not just tired," she'd said. "You're fading."

Maya stood up, her joints popping like dry twigs. The sphinx seemed to smirk. *Fire that never burns.* Maybe it was love—the kind that destroyed you slowly. Maybe it was ambition. Maybe it was this city, this endless machine that promised everything but only took.

She opened her nightstand drawer and found the bottle of vitamin D capsules, next to the notebook where she used to write. One pill for her body. One poem for her soul. Maybe that's how you stopped being a zombie—not all at once, but in small rebellions.

Outside, the city glowed like a dying star. She swallowed the vitamin, picked up her pen, and began to write. Not about David. Not about work. About the moment she'd stopped being afraid to burn.

The sphinx waited. The iPhone darkened. For the first time in years, Maya wasn't fading anymore.