I Loved You in Silence

I Loved You in Silence

— a confession that never found its voice by minaal

I never told you how I felt.

Maybe because love, when spoken too soon, trembles under the weight of its own honesty.

Or maybe because silence, in its strange, unbreakable beauty, felt safer than the truth.

I loved you quietly —

not with grand gestures or borrowed words,

but with the stillness of someone who has found something too sacred to disturb.

Every time I saw you,

the world seemed to rearrange itself into something softer.

The air felt lighter.

Even time seemed to pause —

as if it, too, was listening for the words I could never say.

You never noticed, did you?

How my laughter lingered a little longer when you were near.

How my eyes found you in a crowded room,

and stayed there — just long enough to be caught, but never long enough to confess.

Love has its own language,

and mine was silence.

I spoke it fluently.

There’s a kind of love that doesn’t announce itself —

that doesn’t need validation,

that blooms in the shadows and calls no one’s attention.

It exists between moments,

in the quiet recognition of two souls brushing past each other and pretending it meant nothing.

I loved you in that in-between —

the space where hearts feel,

but words refuse to follow.

Some nights, I’d imagine saying it.

I’d picture the way your eyes might soften,

the way your breath might catch,

the way my world might finally exhale.

But imagination is a safer place than reality.

In dreams, you always loved me back.

In reality,

I feared the silence that would follow my confession —

the shift in your gaze,

the polite kindness that hides heartbreak.

So I swallowed my truth,

again and again,

until it became a part of me.

They say silence speaks louder than words.

If that’s true, then my heart must have been screaming.

Every glance, every pause, every half-smile —

they were confessions wearing disguises.

You taught me that love doesn’t always demand possession.

Sometimes it’s enough just to feel it,

to hold it quietly like a fragile flame cupped in trembling hands,

and to protect it from the wind of reality.

And yet, there were moments —

small, fleeting moments —

when I thought maybe you knew.

When your eyes softened just enough,

when your words hesitated in the same way mine did.

As if, for a heartbeat,

we both understood what was unspoken.

But life is a master of interruption.

The world moves, people change,

and silence — once comforting —

starts to ache.

I have replayed our conversations a hundred times,

searching for a sign that you might have felt it too.

Maybe you did.

Maybe you didn’t.

But I’ve come to accept that not every love story is meant to unfold.

Some are meant to live quietly,

in the spaces between “what if” and “maybe someday.”

Now, when I think of you,

I don’t feel the same ache I once did.

It’s gentler now —

a tender reminder that I once felt something pure,

something real,

something that didn’t need to be returned to be meaningful.

I loved you in silence,

but it was never an empty kind of silence.

It was full —

of hope, of fear, of everything that makes us human.

And though you’ll never know,

you taught me something precious —

that love, even unspoken,

has a language all its own.

Sometimes the most honest confession.

is the one we never make aloud .

- Minaal . shahid .