What the Sphinx Asked at Dinner

The spinach was stuck in my teeth — that's what I was thinking about when Elena told me she wanted a divorce. We were at that overpriced Egyptian restaurant she loved, surrounded by replica statues and faux-hieroglyphics. A stone sphinx watched from the corner, its paint chipping, suggesting that even riddles lose their meaning over time.

"I feel like I'm married to a zombie," she said, not unkindly. "You died three years ago and forgot to tell anyone."

I wanted to argue, but something in her chestnut eyes stopped me. She wasn't wrong. The job at the consulting firm had hollowed me out, left me functioning on autopilot — that liminal state between living and not, the walking dead of corporate America.

Now it's six months later. I have the apartment. She has the house. And I have custody of our daughter's cat, Mister Whiskers, who yowls at 3 AM like he's mourning a marriage he never understood.

Tonight, standing in my kitchen, I'm making dinner for one. The bag of spinach in the fridge has wilted, limp and sad, much like my social life. I consider throwing it out, then decide limp vegetables deserve a chance too.

Athena comes over on Wednesdays with her six-year-old, Maya. Last week, Maya leaned over my fish tank and said, "You know that goldfish has a three-second memory? That's why he never gets bored."

I looked at the fish, darting and red, hitting the glass again and again like he was discovering it for the first time. "Maybe he's the lucky one," I said. "Imagine every moment being brand new. Imagine never carrying anything forward."

"Uncle David," Maya said, "you talk funny."

"I know, sweetie."

I drain the spinach now, watch it curl and shrink in the colander. The cat winds between my legs, purring like a small engine. I spoon the spinach onto my plate, add some feta, pine nuts. A real meal. Not takeout. Not whatever I ate when Elena left — I honestly can't remember.

The sphinx at the restaurant had asked a riddle, I remember now. Its painted lips seemed to move: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?

I'd always thought the answer was about aging. About becoming something that needs support again. But maybe it's simpler: maybe we're all of those things simultaneously. Maybe we carry our childhood vulnerability, our adult strength, and our eventual decline all at once, wrapped together in one contradictory package.

Maybe being a zombie isn't about being dead — it's about refusing to feel all of it at the same time.

I sit at my small table, cat beside me, fish swimming in its artificial dawn. I take a bite. It's good. Actually, genuinely good. And for the first time in three years, I taste it. I really taste it.

Tomorrow I'll call Elena. Ask how she is. Really ask. And maybe — maybe — that's what it means to stop being a zombie. Not coming back to life. But finally deciding to live.