The Sphinx on Our Mantel

Marcus brought the sphinx home from Cairo three months before he left. A brass figurine, hardly larger than my palm, with that inscrutable smile—the kind that knows something you don't. He placed it on the mantel between his mother's urn and our wedding photograph, as if it belonged there, as if it had always been waiting.

'I thought it suited us,' he said, his hand lingering on my shoulder before he withdrew it completely.

Now the sphinx watches me pack his books, its hollow eyes following each movement. The cat—Barnaby, whom Marcus insisted on adopting despite my allergies—weaves through the towers of cardboard boxes, mewling for someone who isn't coming back. Outside, the neighbor's dog barks at something invisible in the twilight, a reminder that the world continues its indifferent rhythms.

Marcus was like that sphinx: beautiful, distant, full of secrets he never quite voiced. I spent five years trying to decipher him, reading between the lines of his silences, excavating meaning from his late nights at the office. I found his emails to another woman six months ago—nothing physical, but the intimacy was worse. They discussed philosophy and art and dreams he'd never shared with me. She understood the parts of him I couldn't reach.

He said it wasn't cheating. He said I was imagining things. He said a lot of things.

The cat jumps onto the mantel, knocking the sphinx onto the floor. It lands with a hollow clatter, dented but unbroken. I pick it up, my thumb tracing the enigma frozen in brass. For the first time, I notice the inscription beneath its base: *Know thyself.*

I drop the sphinx into the donation box with everything else. Let someone else solve its riddle. Tonight, I'll buy myself dinner. I'll take an antihistamine for Barnaby's sake. Tomorrow, I'll learn what my own silence sounds like.