The Riddle of Living Again

The corporate apartment was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional scratch of cat paws on laminate flooring. Elena had been functioning like a zombie for three months since Marcus left—moving through meetings, emails, and empty rooms without truly inhabiting any of them.

Then came the sphinx of an email from HR: "Please schedule a performance review with your manager." A riddle wrapped in corporate bureaucracy. What walks on two legs but has lost its will to move? What answers strategic questions but cannot answer the simplest one—why am I still here?

She stared at the screen. Her cat, Binx, leaped onto the desk and sat directly on her keyboard, as if demanding she acknowledge something real. He'd been Marcus's cat originally, a divorce compromise that now felt like custody of the one living thing that still looked at her with expectation.

"You're hungry," she said, and the sound of her own voice startled her. When had she last spoken aloud?

Binx's golden eyes held none of the judgment she felt from herself. He simply existed—curling his tail around his paws, waiting to be fed, demanding presence over performance. In the corporate maze where she'd been answering riddles about deliverables and metrics, here was a creature whose only question was whether she would show up for him.

The zombie fatigue lifted just enough that she stood up, crossed to the kitchen, and opened a can of cat food. The pop of the lid echoed like a small declaration.

The performance review could wait. The sphinx's riddle was simple after all: she had been answering the wrong questions. Living wasn't about performance metrics or proving she'd moved on correctly. It was about feeding the cat, even when your hands felt heavy. It was about being present in your own apartment, even when the rooms felt too large.

Binx purred, and the vibration traveled through her fingers. For the first time in months, she didn't feel like she was sleepwalking through someone else's life.