Feathers on the Wind

The room was dim, only the flickering light from the streetlamp outside casting long shadows across the cracked walls. June sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes fixed on the cracks in the wood, her fingers tracing the edges of a faded photograph. She didn’t know what she was looking for—maybe a reason to stop feeling so empty, maybe a memory that hadn’t yet dissolved into dust. The edges of the picture were worn, the faces blurred, but she could still make out the silhouette of him, standing beside her, their smiles so bright they seemed to vibrate against the dullness of the world.

She wasn’t sure when it had all gone wrong. She only knew that somewhere along the way, she’d stopped feeling like herself.

The door creaked open behind her, the sound sharp, slicing through the silence. She didn’t turn around. Didn’t need to. She already knew who it was.

“I thought you’d still be here,” his voice was soft, but the words weighed heavy, like stones sinking into water.

“Where else would I go?” June replied, her voice flat, distant.

He took a few steps forward, standing at the threshold of the room. His presence was familiar, but it didn’t comfort her anymore. In fact, it made her feel even more hollow—like his shadow was just another thing that needed to be left behind.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said, his voice tight with something she couldn’t quite place. Guilt? Regret? Or was it frustration? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

June finally looked up, meeting his gaze. The expression on his face was unreadable, his eyes dull. He was a stranger now, despite everything they had shared. He looked as lost as she felt.

“Maybe I’ve been avoiding myself too,” she whispered, her voice breaking on the words.

The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating. It was the kind of silence that made you wonder if you'd forgotten how to breathe, how to speak, how to be anything at all.

He sat beside her on the floor, close but not touching. Neither of them made a move to bridge the space that had opened up between them, the invisible gulf that had formed over the months. They had once been like birds—unafraid, free, always flying together. But now, it felt like they were just two birds, locked in the same cage, wings clipped by the weight of everything they couldn’t say.

“You’re not the same,” he said softly, as if confessing some secret he had been carrying around for too long.

June didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. She knew. She wasn’t the same. Neither was he.

The girl who used to laugh at nothing, the girl who once believed in the magic of the world, was gone. In her place was someone who barely recognized her own reflection, someone who had learned the hard way that people, even the ones you love, can hurt you in ways you never expected. That maybe there were things inside you that could break, things that could never be put back together.

“Are you happy?” he asked after a long moment, his voice barely audible.

The question hung in the air, like smoke from a dying fire. June exhaled slowly, her gaze drifting to the window, the city lights blurring in the distance. There was a time when she would have said yes—without hesitation. There was a time when the world had felt alive, full of possibilities. But now, everything felt muted, like a song that had been played too many times until the notes started to lose their meaning.

“No,” she said finally, her voice hollow. “I don’t think I’ve been happy for a long time.”

He reached for her hand then, fingers brushing against hers, tentative, almost apologetic. But she didn’t pull away. She didn’t pull away because, for the first time in what felt like forever, she wasn’t sure she could.

“We were happy once,” he said, his thumb grazing the back of her hand.

“Yeah,” she agreed softly. “But that’s not who we are anymore, is it?”

His grip tightened, and for a moment, she wondered if he was going to say something—anything that could make this feel better, that could make everything feel less broken. But all he did was pull her closer, pressing his forehead against hers.

June closed her eyes, letting the silence fill her. She could feel the weight of his breath against her skin, the warmth of his presence, and yet it all felt so distant. Like he was a ghost. Or maybe, like she was the ghost.

“We’re still here,” he said quietly, like a question.

“Are we?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

In the quiet that followed, June couldn’t tell if they were talking about the same thing. Were they talking about the love they once shared? Or were they talking about themselves, about the people they had become in the wake of all the things they couldn’t fix? All the words they hadn’t said, all the promises that had been forgotten.

Outside, the wind howled through the trees, and the city buzzed with life, but it felt like they were the only two people in the world, stuck in this room together, with nothing left to say.

“I don’t want to leave,” he said, his voice breaking.

“I don’t want you to leave,” she replied, though she wasn’t sure what she meant anymore. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to stay so she could remember what it felt like to be whole again, or if she just wanted him to stay because leaving would mean facing everything she had lost.

Maybe they were both just birds now—flapping their wings, trying to escape the storm that kept pulling them back. Maybe they had been flying together for so long that they didn’t know how to fly alone.

But sometimes, she wondered if the storm was inside them, too. Maybe it wasn’t just the world around them that had changed. Maybe it was them. Maybe it had always been them.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

June closed her eyes, swallowing the lump in her throat. She didn’t know how to forgive him. She didn’t know how to forgive herself.

“It’s not just you,” she said, her voice barely a breath. “It’s me too.”

They sat in silence, their hands intertwined, but neither of them felt the warmth they once did. The silence, though, was different now—it wasn’t empty, like before. It was full of things unsaid, full of things that didn’t belong to either of them anymore.

“You were always the one who made me feel like I could fly,” she said quietly, her voice fragile. “But now… I don’t know how to fly anymore.”

He squeezed her hand, but she didn’t feel the spark she used to. The spark that had once ignited every moment between them, making everything feel possible. The spark that had kept them in the sky, soaring, untouchable.

They had been birds of a feather, once, flying side by side. But now, it felt like they were just two birds, struggling to find the same rhythm.

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” she admitted, her voice trembling.

“I don’t either,” he said softly.

For a long time, they stayed there, holding each other, caught in a moment that felt both endless and fleeting. They weren’t the people they had once been. They weren’t the people they wanted to be.

And yet, they were still here, together in this room, with all their broken pieces.

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In a way, they were still flying. But the winds had changed.