Silent Love

It all started on the day when you could solve the problem that I couldn’t, at that moment the world felt to turn around slowly not like it used to, so slowly that I didn’t know what to say and do and every time I saw you I saw lots of flower falls around you and the sun gave it lights upon you like a spotlight that shines the main characters in the theater. Each time I see you in the class, I often wonder what she is reading, if she likes historical or drama novels as I do, and if she imagines herself slipping between the pages that she reads. But I never asked.

She didn’t know me not really. I was just the man who always sat at the back of the class, a loser and a nobody that no one knew. To her, maybe I was part of the scenery, nothing more than the sound of a chair scraping against the floor or some random poster hanging around at the back of the class.

And yet, I loved her.

It wasn’t the kind of love that came with grand gestures or passionate confessions. It was quieter, steadier, woven into the spaces between stolen glances and lingering moments when our eyes met across the room. I told myself that it was enough but the truth is it's not enough. That loving her from a distance, without expectation, without burdening her with the weight of my feelings. Was that a kind of love too?

But silence is a cruel companion.

I knew everything about her routines like the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she was deep in thought, how she tapped her pen to the table, the way she tilted her head slightly when someone spoke to her, and the way she spoke to her friends. And yet, she knew nothing about me. I was a ghost in her world, invisible, unspoken, an existence that was not important to her.

There were times when I convinced myself I would say something, I had to say something. Even if it's just a simple “hello” or maybe a comment on the book she was reading. A start, however small. But every time the words reached the edge of my lips, they slipped away, lost to fear, swallowed by the doubt that she would see me as nothing more than another passing stranger or something even worse.

So I stayed silent.

One day, graduation day came after all these years. Everyone seemed happy. Smiles on their faces that they had finally achieved the diploma but not mine because I couldn't even talk to her even after all those years passed by, and I thought this might be my last chance to speak to her, even if it was just a “hello” that came out of my mouth or anything please I begged god that "please just once give me the courage". But when I saw her, everything went dark. I saw her with someone else laughing and cherishing with him and seemed to be enjoying the moment with that person and it made me wonder what to do in this silence. I just imagined what would happen if it was me and not him what would it feel like, am I the one smiling so brightly like that and not just imagination? I walked away from them in a broken state but I was also happy for her because I knew deep down that I couldn't make her smile so brightly like that so I just left with a few tears of regret on my face. And just like that, the love I had carried so quietly, so carefully, and for a long time became an echo of something that had never truly existed.

I had loved her in silence, and now, in silence, she had disappeared.