Hollow Talks
A microfiction piece.
I haven't come to terms with seeing you only for small talk.
Our existence together was a dance, an easy sliding of tectonic plates over one another. No friction. No catches. Just smooth sailing, you and I. It was effortless, like breathing in the morning fog.
I knew the touch of you.
And I knew what that touch transmitted. I could tell by the smell of your sweat what sort of day you were having. God, the kinds of conversations we had in silence were something else. Whole universes unravelled between us and we were explorers of their depths, crawling through the cosmos with confident silence because these lines of dialogue can never be put to the page.
I don't think we ever made small talk.
When we did open our mouths, it was to share the heartbreak of the smashed moth on the windshield or the raccoon thumping underfoot, dead three times over. We laughed when it rained. And rambled on and on and on about the things that could live in the cornfields.
You told me not to cry over dead lightning bugs.
Maybe that was my first warning sign that this poetry between us would turn into stale nothingness.
We get together once a year now, but the crowd is so big I can't ever hear you and what I do catch is useless. Every sentence has one stuck underneath it. And we should be saying the unsaid but we're out of practice, aren't we?
"Weather's nice."
But we don't chase lightning anymore.
"You look great."
But healthy doesn't suit your mind.
"I've been keeping busy."
Staring at the gap you've left in my nights.
And then what? You drink your beer and silence settles between us, the kind that used to inspire invisible conversations but this time I can only hear an apology for letting me go. And I'm saying it too.
I don't like making small talk with you.
How could I when I'll always remember what our silence was like?
About the Creator
Silver Daux
Shadowed souls, cursed magic, poetry that tangles itself in your soul and yanks out the ugly darkness from within. Maybe there's something broken in me, but it's in you too.
Ah, also:
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Comments (14)
Achingly beautiful prose, Silver! I feel like there are writers with a prose mind or a poetry mind, those who can bounce back and forth, and then there are writers like you who employ both simultaneously all the time!
A very good read.
God, this was heart wrenching. You encompass the pain of hearing small talk from someone once so beloved in a way that describes it almost as a death. So painful and poignant and crushing.
This is just soul crushing... it felt like it could have been a break up between lovers or good friends. The kind of familiarity you described is so beautiful and personal, its always so sad when it just fades away... Great work SD!!!
This piece really hits home. It's amazing how it captures the shift in a relationship so well. I've had similar experiences where a connection that was once so deep fades over time. Just like you said, the small talk now feels so empty compared to what used to be. I think about those moments of real connection, like when you knew someone so well you could tell their mood from a smell or a touch. It's hard to let go of that. And it's even tougher when you try to revive it and it just doesn't feel the same. It makes me wonder, how do you think we can hold onto those deep connections? Is it possible to rekindle that kind of relationship, or do we just have to accept that things change? Because it's really sad when something that was so special turns into just small talk.
Because silence once spoke everything.
This piece is breathtaking—raw, lyrical, and hauntingly intimate. The way you paint silence as its own language, once fluent and cosmic, now reduced to strained pleasantries, is profoundly moving. Your imagery—tectonic plates, cornfield creatures, crushed moths, dead lightning bugs—strikes that perfect balance between grounded detail and metaphorical depth. There's so much tenderness woven into the grief of emotional distance, and it lingers long after reading. This isn't just writing; it's remembering out loud, and you've done it beautifully.
Love this. Congratulations on your top story
You captured the ache of lost connection so vividly — I felt every word. Congratulations on your top story!
Back to say congrats on Top Story, glad to see your name up there alongside mine too!
Beautiful. I know that feeling too well
Excellently rendered. I loved this short and powerful journey
Now this is what I aspire to write one day, A piece, short and powerful that shivers a soul with emotions we never knew existed. Wonderful, absolutely wonderful.
Oh, fuck, my friend. This is exceptional. Without wishing to labour things or go on too much, it just really is a fine bit of writing. I love how you've elevated that death to passion in a relationship and given it that grandiose melodramtic, almost sci-fi-dystopian feel. Cos that's what it so often feels like. The contrast between those monumental tectonic plate shifting silences with the humdrum of comfortable and familiar, the ordinary, is so jarring. From the "smashed moth" and "raccoons thumping underfoot" - "dead three times over". I wish I could read this for the first time again. Like, and relive it. Again and again. Just fucking awesome, truly. Awesome seems a stupid word to use. But, it's hot here ha. Sublime, masterpiece are more fitting? Anyway, well done.