The Sphinx Knows

The papaya sat on the counter, ripe and threatening to burst. Marcus always bought them, even though he knew she hated the way their flesh reminded her of things better left buried—soft, sweet, things that rot too quickly.

'Tell me,' the sphinx had whispered the night before, its stone lips somehow moving in the garden's half-light. 'What walks on four legs in the morning, three at noon, and two at night, yet knows itself only when it's too late to change?'

She'd been running then. Running from the house, from the papaya on the counter, from the way her mother's hat collection still lined the hallway even after three years of her being gone.

The water hit her face—cold, shocking, necessary. She'd run until the ocean stopped her, until there was nowhere else to go. The hat she wore, one of her mother's wide-brimmed numbers, had blown off in the wind. She'd let it go.

'You're not answering,' the sphinx said. Its marble eyes seemed to hold all the questions she'd been avoiding since the funeral, since the diagnosis, since she realized that running wasn't the same as moving.

She looked at the papaya again. It was splitting now, revealing its black seeds—like secrets, like the things you carry until they're too heavy. She picked up the knife.

'Human,' she said finally, slicing through the fruit's soft resistance. 'The answer is human.'

The sphinx smiled, or perhaps it was just the moonlight playing tricks on stone.

'Wrong,' it said. 'The answer is someone who finally stops running.'