I didn’t know
silence could stretch this far
without breaking something inside me
until the day you appeared again,
not as a storm,
not as an apology,
but as a presence
my heart recognised before my mind could react.
Between that last message in December
and the moment your name lit up again,
I lived… yes
but not fully.
There was a part of me
that refused to move forward,
as if time itself had paused
out of respect
for something it didn’t understand how to end.
I carried you quietly.
Not loudly, not desperately
but in a way that sat deep,
beneath distractions,
beneath conversations,
beneath everything that tried to replace you
and failed.
And then… you returned.
Do you understand what that does
to someone who never truly left?
Because I didn’t.
Not really.
I tried to act like I had.
I told myself stories of acceptance,
of maturity,
of letting life take its course
but every one of those stories
had your name hidden between the lines.
And when you read my words
those quiet pieces of me I left behind
on a page that carried your name
it felt like you stepped into a place
I never invited anyone else into.
Not even deliberately.
Not even consciously.
You just… found it.
That space where I wasn’t performing,
wasn’t explaining,
wasn’t trying to be understood
just feeling,
in the only way I knew how.
And the truth is
I have been pretending.
Pretending that I don’t feel as deeply as I do.
Pretending that your absence didn’t leave
a shape in my days
that nothing else could fill.
Pretending that I moved on
when in reality,
I just learned how to carry it better.
Because it’s easier, isn’t it?
To look composed.
To speak lightly.
To laugh where something once meant everything.
But there are moments
quiet ones
where that composure slips,
and I realise
I never really stopped feeling you
at all.
Even now,
as we speak again
like two people finding a new rhythm,
I feel the weight of everything unspoken
sitting gently between us.
We are not who we were before.
There is more awareness now,
more distance,
more understanding of what can and cannot be said.
But somehow,
that doesn’t make this smaller.
If anything
it makes it deeper.
Because this time,
nothing is being rushed,
nothing is being forced,
nothing is being claimed.
And yet…
it still exists.
That quiet pull.
That familiarity.
That strange, undeniable sense
that something here
refused to disappear,
no matter how long it was left untouched.
I don’t stand here empty of feeling.
I don’t stand here untouched by what we were,
or what we could have been.
I stand here
aware of every part of it
the closeness,
the misunderstanding,
the timing,
the distance,
the weight of choices we made
and the ones we didn’t.
And still…
you are here again.
Not as a memory.
Not as something finished.
But as a presence
that continues to rewrite itself
without asking permission.
And sometimes,
without even trying to go further than this moment,
I wonder what it would be like
to simply be near you
not to prove anything,
not to rush anything
just to exist in the same quiet space,
where even silence feels understood.
And if a moment ever arrives
where the distance disappears,
I don’t imagine it as something planned,
or spoken into existence
but something that finds its way quietly,
the way certain feelings do,
when they are no longer being resisted.
If there is anything I have learned,
it is this
Some connections do not end
when people stop speaking.
They wait.
They settle into silence,
they reshape themselves in absence,
and when they return,
they are quieter
but heavier,
deeper,
harder to ignore.
So I won’t reduce this
to something simple.
I won’t pretend it’s casual,
or easy,
or just another conversation passing through time.
Because it isn’t.
And neither are you.
Whatever this is
whatever it becomes,
or doesn’t become
it has already left its mark
in a way that doesn’t ask for definition
to be real.
And maybe that is the truth I can finally accept
Not everything that matters
needs to be resolved,
claimed,
or even understood.
Some things…
are simply meant to be felt
fully,
honestly,
without pretending
they were ever small.
