The Riddle of Unsaid Things

Maria sat on the balcony at 2 AM, peeling an orange with surgical precision. The citrus scent cut through the stale air of their apartment—sharp, bright, accusing. Inside, David slept. Or pretended to.

On the tiny table beside her wine glass sat the vitamin D supplements her doctor had prescribed. "Your levels are critically low," she'd said, as if Maria's body was a failing infrastructure project. But David had started taking them too—solidarity, or something like it. His bottle sat beside hers, two soldiers marching toward the same uncertain horizon.

A cable snaked through the sliding door—the fiber optic lifeline they'd installed last month. Another expense, another thing to discuss but never did. They'd watched a documentary about the Great Sphinx of Egypt together last week,silent on the couch, thighs barely touching. The narrator had described how the sphinx posed riddles to travelers, devouring those who couldn't answer.

"What's our riddle?" Maria had asked, wine-loose and reckless.

David had paused the cable feed. The sphinx's weathered stone face filled the screen, its human features eroded beyond recognition.

"I don't think we get to ask the questions," he'd said.

Now Maria watched her hands in the moonlight. The orange peel formed a perfect spiral on the glass table. She'd turned thirty-eight last week. No children. No answers. Just vitamins and fiber optics and the slow erosion of whatever they'd once been to each other.

Inside, the mattress shifted. David's footsteps approached.

"Can't sleep?"

She held up a section of orange. "Vitamin C," she said. "Fight what's coming."

He sat beside her, not touching, and watched the cable pulse with data they'd never parse. The sphinx's riddle hung between them, unasked, unanswered, devouring them both by degrees.

"Maria—"

"Eat," she said, pressing the fruit into his palm. "Before it rots."

He did. She watched his throat work as he swallowed, and wondered if this was what marriage became: two creatures feeding each other in the dark, pretending not to know what they'd already lost.