If Love Had a Voice

If love had a voice, it wouldn’t scream.
It would whisper—softly, patiently—waiting for the right heart to listen.
I met Aaira on a night when I had stopped believing in coincidences. The city was loud, restless, alive with strangers rushing past one another, each carrying their own unfinished stories. I was standing on a bridge, staring at the river below, wondering how something could keep moving even when it carried so much weight.
She stood beside me without asking permission.
“You look like someone who talks to the dark,” she said.
I smiled, surprised.
“And you look like someone who listens.”
That night, we talked until the city fell quiet. She told me she recorded voices—random people, random moments—because she believed every voice carried a hidden truth. I told her I wrote letters I never sent. She laughed at that, the kind of laugh that stays with you longer than words.
From that night on, she became my habit.
We met on rooftops, cafés, bus stops, anywhere the world slowed down enough for us to breathe. She would press the record button on her old audio recorder and ask,
“Say something you’ve never said out loud.”
Sometimes I spoke about fear. Sometimes about dreams. Once, without thinking, I said,
“I think I’m falling in love.”
She didn’t respond immediately. She just kept recording.
Love with Aaira wasn’t dramatic. It was gentle. It arrived in shared silences, in half-finished sentences, in the way she remembered the smallest details—how I liked my tea, which songs made me quiet, how my voice changed when I was lying.
One evening, she played a recording for me.
It was my voice—from weeks ago—laughing.
“You sound happiest when you forget you’re being heard,” she said.
That scared me.
Because love has a way of making us visible, and I had spent years hiding.
Then one day, everything changed.
Aaira got an offer—a scholarship abroad. A chance she had worked for her entire life. She told me with shaking hands and hopeful eyes.
“I don’t want you to feel left behind,” she said.
I wanted to tell her to stay. I wanted to say love should be enough.
But love is not a cage.
So I smiled.
“You were never meant to stay still.”
The night before she left, we met on the same bridge where we first talked. The river moved endlessly beneath us.
She handed me her recorder.
“Keep this,” she said. “Fill it with your voice. So distance doesn’t erase us.”
I held it like it was fragile.
At the airport, she hugged me longer than necessary.
“If love has a voice,” she whispered, “yours is the one I’ll always recognize.”
She left.
Days became quieter. Then heavier.
I spoke into the recorder every night—about my mornings, my regrets, the ache of missing her. I recorded my silence when words failed. Sometimes, I played old recordings just to hear her breathe in the background.
We stayed connected—messages, calls, shared dreams—but time zones are cruel, and life doesn’t pause for longing.
Slowly, the calls shortened.
Slowly, the space grew.
One night, I stopped recording.
Years passed.
I became someone else—stronger, maybe lonelier. The recorder stayed locked away, like a chapter I was afraid to reread.
Then one day, I received a package.
Inside was the recorder.
And a note.
“Press play.”
My hands trembled.
Her voice filled the room—older, calmer.
“I never stopped listening,” she said. “I heard your fear, your strength, your love. I carried your voice through cities, through nights when I almost gave up.”
There was a pause.
“I’m coming home.”
We met again on the same bridge. Older. Changed. Familiar.
No dramatic running. No tears.
Just a quiet smile.
She pressed the record button.
“Say something,” she said.
I looked at her and spoke the truth I had been carrying for years.
“Some love stories don’t need to stay loud to stay alive.”
She stopped recording.
Because some moments are meant to be felt—
not saved.