What the Sphinx Knows About Heartbreak

Working the night shift at the museum was supposed to be temporary. Just until Marcus finished his dissertation or whatever lie he'd told me when he moved out. Now it had been seven months, and I was spending my nights alone with a two-ton limestone sphinx from the Ptolemaic dynasty.

The museum was peaceful at 2 AM. The only other living thing was security's golden retriever, Barnaby, who slept in the guard booth and sometimes followed me on my rounds, his nails clicking softly against the polished floors. I'd started talking to him — and to the sphinx — when the silence became too much.

"Your riddle wasn't even that hard," I whispered to the limestone face, stopping in front of the glass case. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in evening? Please. Everyone knows that one."

Barnaby thumped his tail against the floor, either in agreement or because he was dreaming of squirrels.

My phone buzzed. A text from Marcus: *Saw you left your swimming goggles at the apartment. Want me to mail them?*

I stared at the screen. We'd joined that community pool together last spring, thinking it would be something we could do on weekends. We'd gone exactly three times. The chlorine smell still made me think of his wet skin against mine in the shower afterward, how he'd laughed when I complained about the spinach stuck between his teeth from our post-swim smoothies.

*I'm not going swimming anymore,* I typed back, then deleted it.

*Keep them,* I sent instead.

Marcus replied instantly: *Are you okay?*

I put the phone in my pocket. My palms were sweating. I pressed them against the cool glass of the sphinx case, leaving foggy prints that evaporated seconds later.

"You're a sphinx," I said aloud. "You're supposed to have answers. Or at least better riddles."

Barnaby stood up, stretched, and wandered off toward the Egyptian wing.

I looked at the sphinx's broken nose, its weathered paws. Something about its damaged beauty made my throat tight. It had stood guard over tombs for thousands of years, watching generations mourn and forget and mourn again. It knew something about heartbreak that I didn't yet.

My phone buzzed again. *Can we talk?*

I thought about the swimming goggles gathering dust in Marcus's bathroom, how they'd looked beside his sink like the ghost of a life we'd almost lived. I thought about the post-swim sandwiches, the spinach always falling out of the bread, how he'd wipe it off my chin with his thumb.

I turned away from the sphinx and typed: *Some other time.*

Then I deleted that too and typed: *No.*

I pressed send, and for the first time in seven months, something in my chest felt lighter. Barnaby returned and pressed his warm weight against my leg, and I stayed there with the sphinx until dawn, watching the morning light move across the limestone like time itself, patient and relentless, wearing everything down to something new.