The Sphinx at Second Base

The old sphinx still guarded the abandoned ballpark, her limestone face eroded by thirty winters, her riddle lost to time. Elena stood at home plate, the gravel crunching beneath her boots, and remembered how she and Marcus had spent entire afternoons here, pretending this crumbling diamond was Wrigley Field.

"You're overthinking it," Marcus had said during their last game, his voice rasping from chemotherapy. "Just throw the ball, El. Stop trying to solve every puzzle like it's the goddamn sphinx."

She'd laughed then, but the laughter had caught in her throat. Marcus had always been the one who kept things simple, the friend who'd remind her that not everything needed analysis. Now she was running—running from the hospital room where his mother had pressed his old baseball glove into her hands, running from the funeral where she'd barely managed to hold it together, running from the empty apartment across the hall where his key still worked.

The water tower beyond the outfield cast a long shadow across the overgrown grass. Elena walked to the pitcher's mound and dropped Marcus's glove onto the dust. It felt wrong without his hand inside it.

"You weren't supposed to go first," she whispered to the empty field. "We were supposed to grow old together, complaining about back pain andProperty taxes."

The sphinx watched silently, her stone eyes offering no answers. Elena realized then that the riddle wasn't about why Marcus had died so young, or how to make sense of meaningless loss. The riddle was how to keep living when your other half was gone.

She picked up the glove, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and started walking back toward the parking lot. For the first time since the funeral, she didn't feel like running anymore.