What the Sphinx Knows

The coaxial cable lay coiled on the floor like a dead snake, its silver connector staring up at me with that dumb metallic eye. Three weeks after Maya left, and I was finally getting around to cancelling the cable. Another service we'd shared but never used, like the gym membership, like the Sunday crossword ritual, like us.

Outside, lightning fractured the November sky, a jagged white crack that made me jump. I'd always hated thunder. Maya used to wrap herself around me when storms rolled in, her warm breath against my neck, whispering that the noise was just clouds saying hello. Now the living room felt cavernous without her body beside mine.

That's when I noticed it: the Sphinx. Not a literal one, though Maya had dragged me to Egypt five years ago, where we'd sweated through tourist-trap photographs beside the real thing. No—this was the mental image that had been haunting me for weeks. The riddle creature. The one who asked impossible questions and devoured you when you failed to answer.

My sphinx had a simpler query: Why did you think you deserved happiness?

I'd been trying to solve it since the day she packed her bags. I'd run through answers like I was channel surfing through our seven years together. Was it the career I'd prioritized? The times I'd forgotten to listen? The way I'd assumed her silence meant contentment rather than resignation?

The cable guy arrived as the second storm cell moved in. He looked like he'd rather be anywhere else, thunder rumbling low in his belly as he worked.

"You cancelling?" he asked, not looking up.

"Yeah."

"Lot of that lately. People cutting the cord."

He didn't know the half of it. I'd been cutting cords for years—my parents, my old friends, the parts of myself that were too inconvenient to carry. Maya was just the latest in a lifetime of severances.

"You got a riddle for me?" I asked, surprising myself.

He paused, cable cutter paused mid-snip. "Excuse me?"

"Never mind."

That night, I sat in the apartment's new quiet. No TV hum. No Maya breathing beside me. Just the Sphinx, waiting in the corner with its patient, stone-faced silence.

Maybe the answer wasn't a reason I deserved happiness. Maybe the riddle was rigged. Maybe the lightning that destroys is the same lightning that illuminates, and the difference is just a matter of where you're standing when it strikes.

I picked up my phone and scrolled to her name. I didn't call. But I didn't delete her number either. Some sphinxes you never stop trying to answer.