Sphinx

The question came before the wings did. A sphinx waited on the lion body, human face, the old riddle already in the dust. People who reached that stone felt their answer leave them. They went on with a sphinx gift of the unsaid thing. It returns in sphinx playing cards no one wants to name out loud, in a sphinx notebook with the question written and the line under it blank, in a sphinx postcard of the face and the folded wing. The road stays empty. The riddle does not.