The Riddle We Couldn't Solve

The sphinx moth tapping against the bedroom window at 3 AM should have been our first clue. Marcus slept beside me, his breathing rhythmic and unconscious, while I lay there counting the ways we'd become strangers to each other.

"You need to slow down," he'd told me three days earlier, watching me lace up my running shoes. I'd started running six months ago — first to escape the apartment after our fights, then because the rhythm of pavement beneath my feet became the only thing that made sense. But running from something doesn't mean you're not still carrying it.

I reached for the bottle of vitamin D supplements on my nightstand. Dr. Hoffman had prescribed them when I confessed I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt genuine joy. "Take two daily," she'd said, as if happiness could be dosed. I dry-swallowed them anyway.

The moth persisted, its wings leaving faint powdery marks on the glass. Sphinx moths don't live long, I remembered from somewhere. They exist almost entirely in the darkness, drawn to light they can never truly reach.

Marcus stirred. "What's that noise?"

"A moth," I said. "A sphinx."

He laughed, sleep-thick and bitter. "Perfect. We finally get our mythical creature, and it's just a bug that's going to die in a day."

The words hung between us, heavier than the years of unsaid things. The riddle wasn't what had broken us — his affair, my emotional absence, the way we'd dismantled our marriage piece by piece. The riddle was why we were both still here, bearing the weight of something that had already collapsed.

"Marcus," I said, and he turned toward me, eyes catching the moonlight. "I'm done running."

The sphinx moth finally found the crack in the weatherstripping and slipped through into the night, and somewhere in the darkness between us, I felt the first genuine thing in months: not hope, exactly, but something like courage.