The Riddle of the Salad Bar

Maya sat across from Daniel at the bistro, picking at her spinach salad while he explained why he needed to take a break from their relationship. Three years, and he was choosing now to find himself.

"You're like the sphinx," he said, gesturing with his wine glass. "Mysterious, guarded. I never know what you're thinking."

Maya nearly laughed. The sphinx had devoured those who couldn't solve her riddles. Daniel had simply never bothered to ask the right questions.

"I'm taking vitamin D supplements," she said instead, watching his confusion. "For the darkness."

The darkness had started six months ago when her mother died, descending like a gray fog that no amount of sunlight could penetrate. Daniel had held her at the funeral, made sympathetic noises, then gradually retreated into his work, his hobbies, his everything that wasn't her grief.

"Maya, you know I care about you." He reached for her hand across the table. "But this heaviness... I can't be your therapist."

She pulled her hand away. "I never asked you to be."

But she had asked for other things. For him to stay when she cried in the middle of the night. For him to remember that her mother used to make spinach from their garden, how the smell now made Maya simultaneously comforted and devastated. For him to understand that some wounds didn't heal, they just scarred over, and you lived with the tightness of the skin.

"I think the sphinx's riddle was never about the answer," Maya said, standing up and leaving money for her uneaten lunch. "It was about whether anyone cared enough to try solving it."

She walked out into the bright afternoon, fishing her vitamin bottle from her purse. The plastic rattled against her keys—a small sound, but enough. She'd keep taking them, keep showing up, keep living in this world that demanded answers she didn't have. Some days that would have to be enough.