The Sphinx of Sunday Morning

The cat watched me with ancient, unimpressed eyes from the kitchen counter as I stared at my iPhone, willing it to light up with a message that would never come. Three weeks since Sarah walked out, and still I checked the damn thing like a compulsive gambler watching losing spins on a slot machine.

I shoved the phone in my pocket and grabbed my coat. Sunday morning walks had become my ritual — four miles of pavement and pretense that I was fine, that my life at forty-two wasn't collapsing like a poorly constructed soufflé.

The bull sat in the middle of the park path, massive and immovable, a bronze statue some long-dead artist had placed there as a joke about human stubbornness. I'd walked past it a hundred times, but today something stopped me. Maybe it was the way the morning light caught its horns, or maybe I just didn't want to go back to my empty apartment yet.

"You're full of shit," I told it. "You're just a big brass bull standing in the middle of nowhere pretending to mean something."

A woman laughed behind me. She sat on the nearby bench with a sphinx-like composure, dark eyes holding mysteries I couldn't begin to fathom. Maybe thirty, maybe fifty — she existed outside ordinary time.

"That bull has been here longer than your problems," she said. "It's seen worse heartbreak than yours."

"You don't know me."

"I know you're talking to statues at 7 AM on a Sunday." She patted the bench beside her. "Sit. The cat'll wait."

"I don't have a — " Then I remembered. My cat. The one Sarah had left behind, the one I'd been feeding but not really seeing, the one currently judging my entire existence from my kitchen counter. "How did you know?"

"Everyone has something they're not seeing clearly." Her hand moved to her own pocket, where the outline of an iPhone pressed against the fabric. "Sarah wasn't the first person to leave. She won't be the last. But the bull? The bull stays."

I sat. We watched the morning light move across the bronze surface, and for the first time in three weeks, I didn't check my phone. The riddle, I realized, wasn't about why she'd left — it was about why I was still waiting for permission to live.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Does it matter?" She stood, sphinx-like smile playing on her lips. "Just feed your cat. He's been waiting longer than you know."

I walked home slowly. The iPhone buzzed in my pocket — work email, spam, someone wanting something — and I kept walking. The cat met me at the door, and this time, I really saw him.