The Silence in Her Photograph

Every morning, I wake up before the sun — not because I love mornings, but because I can’t sleep past the silence.

My room is still. Too still. And yet, she’s everywhere. On the walls, in the empty chair near the window, in the untouched cup beside mine. But most of all, she’s in the photograph on the table.

Her favorite one — the one I took on her last birthday.

She’s smiling in it. Not a posed smile, but the real one. That smile that lit up the dullest corners of my life. Hair tied back, eyes full of mischief, her head slightly tilted like she always did when she was teasing me. She’s wearing that pale blue scarf she said made her “look like a sky someone could fall into.”

And now, all I do is fall.

It’s been seven months since she left. Seven months since cancer decided to steal the voice that once called me “jaan” every morning.

Seven months since the hospital bed replaced our bed.

Seven months since her last breath filled my hands, but her voice slipped past me forever.

I was there when she faded. I held her hand when her chest stopped rising. I kissed her forehead when her fingers turned cold. But no matter how tightly I held her, death did not loosen its grip.

And now, I’m left with her silence.

They say time heals. No, it doesn’t. Time numbs. It makes the edges dull. It makes your screaming turn into whispers. But the wound? The wound still breathes.

I talk to her picture. I know that sounds mad, but it’s all I have left.

Every day, I sit across from that frame and whisper,

> “Why did you leave me like this, Areeba?
You promised forever. Didn’t you?”



And then I wait.

Wait for a voice that doesn’t come. For a blink that doesn’t happen. For lips that don’t move.

Just that same smile. Mocking, almost. Beautiful, yet brutal.

> تیری تصویر سے گلہ ہے مجھے
یہ مجھ سے بات کیوں نہیں کرتی



I have a complaint with your picture… why doesn’t it talk to me?


Some nights I hear her.

No, not like ghosts or movies. I hear her in the way the wind rustles the curtain, in the way my tea cools without her telling me to hurry. In the way our favorite song comes on the radio and I instinctively look at her empty seat, expecting her humming.

My fingers ache to touch her hair.
My ears burn to hear her laugh.
My soul begs for one word. Just one.

But silence is cruel.

I remember everything about her.

How she would complain that I always lost my socks.
How she wrote poems but never showed them to anyone — except me.
How she used to put her head on my chest and say,
“This is my safest place.”

Now my chest is hollow. And all that’s left is the echo of her breath.

The world moved on. It always does.
Friends came with condolences and casseroles.
Her mother cried beside me at the funeral.
Her sister hugged me for the first time.
People told me to be strong.

But no one told me what to do when her voice fades from my memory.

That’s what scares me the most.
I don’t fear forgetting her face — I have her photograph.
But I’m starting to forget how she sounded when she said my name.
What her voice was like when she was sleepy, or angry, or shy.

That’s a second death — the death of sound.

One day, I tried to record myself talking to her picture.
Just to feel like I wasn’t alone.

I played it back — and it shattered me.
Because her silence, even in the recording, was louder than my words.


---

A few weeks ago, I went to her favorite bookstore.
The owner still remembers her.
He handed me a small notebook she once bought but never picked up.

I opened it.

The first page read:

> “If I go before you… don’t wait for my voice.
Listen to your heart — I’ll be speaking from there.”



That was her.

Always knowing how to soften my grief before it arrived.

I read those lines over and over, as if they could rewrite my loneliness.

And for the first time in months… I didn’t cry.

I just sat in the corner of that bookstore and smiled through my tears.

Because I realized something:

Maybe her picture doesn't talk…
But her love still does.


Now, when I sit by her photograph, I don’t ask it to speak anymore.

Instead, I speak for both of us.

I tell her about my day. About how the neighbors adopted a dog. About how I burnt the daal again. About how the moon looked extra full last night — just like the night we kissed for the first time.

I tell her that I miss her.

And then I place my hand over my heart.

And in that small, silent place…

I hear her.

Not with ears. But with the kind of love that doesn’t die.

The kind that never needed a voice to be heard.