What the Sphinx Remembers

The papaya sat on the balcony railing, seeds exposed like tiny black eyes watching me. Rain slashed through the palm fronds in sheets, and I remembered how you used to cut them—precise, surgical cuts, spooning out the flesh like you were performing an autopsy on something that had already died between us.

I'm back in Oahu. The resort has a kitschy sphinx by the pool—tacky, you said. But you were wrong about so many things.

We'd been swimming that night, ten years ago, when you told me you were leaving. Not leaving the island. Leaving me. The water had been glass-calm, the kind of midnight black that feels like falling into space. You tread water beside me, your pale face luminous, and I thought you were going to confess love. Instead, you confessed betrayal—not romantic, but something worse. You'd been sleeping with my brother. You'd been doing it for months.

Now lightning fractures the sky, white-hot veins through purple clouds. The sphinx stares impassively, its riddle long worn away by salt and sun and the hands of tourists seeking wisdom from stone.

I eat the papaya. It's overripe, fermenting slightly, sweet and cloying. Everything rots eventually. Even secrets.

You send me emails sometimes. How's the writing? How's life? As if you didn't break something fundamental in me. As if I don't still dream of you treading water in that black ocean, your voice soft and terrible.

Another lightning strike. The courtyard floods with light. For a second, I see you standing there, mouth open to speak, eyes wide with something that might have been regret.

But it's just the rain. Just the papaya's empty skin. Just the sphinx, keeping its silence like the grave.

I finish the fruit and go inside. Some riddles aren't meant to be solved.