The Riddle of Empty Rooms

The pills spilled across her countertops like a mosaic of fear—Vitamin D for bones that felt brittle before their time, B-complex for energy that never seemed to come, magnesium for sleep that abandoned her three years ago. At forty-seven, Elena had become an archaeologist of her own decay, measuring life in supplement bottles and bloodwork results.

Her iPhone glowed at 3 AM again—that terrible blue light that had replaced intimacy. Another notification from David's "work email," which she'd stopped believing months ago. The device lay heavy against her chest like a tiny coffin, holding evidence of infidelity she refused to open, a sphinx's riddle she couldn't solve: What breaks when you name it?

"You're obsessing," Dr. Patel had said during yesterday's session. "Some questions destroy more than they reveal."

Elena swallowed her evening vitamins with tap water, thinking about how David had stopped looking at her somewhere between her forty-fifth birthday and his promotion. How conversation had become textual, sporadic, transmitted through screens instead of across sheets.

The sphinx moth had appeared at their window that morning—gray wings dusted with patterns that looked like faded photographs. It battered itself against the glass, drawn to something it couldn't reach. Elena had watched for twenty minutes, mesmerized by its desperation, before David had pulled the blinds without glancing up from his phone.

"It's just a bug," he'd said.

But that's what she'd become to him—something that hovered outside his real life, drawn to warmth that no longer welcomed her.

Tonight, the iPhone buzzed with a message that wasn't from work. Elena didn't open it. Instead, she carried her vitamin bottles to the bathroom, lined them up in the cabinet, and caught her own reflection in the mirror—a woman with riddles in her eyes and answers she'd finally stopped waiting for.

The sphinx had asked: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?

Elena deleted the message unread. A different riddle now: What holds you together after you've fallen apart?

She swallowed her vitamins without water.