The Weight of Silence

The Weight of Silence

The dock creaked under Elena’s weight – literally, it had creaked for years now, along with almost every other thing in this place. Her bare feet swayed over that water, back and forth like she was five again, like time hadn’t worked its magic.

Oh God, but the lake. It looked blacker than spilled ink this morning, calm and still, except for tiny waves of light where the wind kissed it. She’d forgotten the smell of the lake – that odd combination of rotting leaves and boat fuel that grabs you around the neck. Strange things about smells – they don’t care if you want them to; they just drag you backward through the years whenever they feel like it.

Before Mateo’s name began to be a phrase, she only spoke to herself. Before their fight turned into this…this polished silence that has stretched on for what feels like four years?

Her phone felt heavy in her hand.

She had entered his number again – for the third time this week — and her thumb was simply hovering there, shaking slightly. The three words that stared back at her read:

“Hi. I miss you.”

That’s it. That is all she can muster. No “I was wrong” or “I didn’t get it”— those sounded too painful, like swallowing glass. She gave him the plain truth of missing him – raw and open as a wound.

On the other side of the dock, two ducks were fighting over a piece of bread. Arguing like kids, all squawks and flailing rage. Elena laughed abruptly and roughly because it wasn’t that something? Wasn’t that exactly what they were? All of those afternoons arguing about nothing, which movie, which restaurant, who said what, that unique blend of gentleness and obstinacy that colors everything when you are young and too proud to give way.

She closed her eyes and let memories carry her.

17 Again. The August heat, thick as honey, coated her skin. Mateo grinned that grin – the one signifying he already knew she would follow him down into the cold darkness of the water beneath. Her heart pounded so hard, she thought she would actually die. But he waited patiently for her like the sun rising, trusting in her more than she trusted in herself.

When she finally broke the surface – gasping and half drowned and fully alive – he grasped her arms and pulled her up, using his warm hands to press against her ribs, and they laughed until their sides hurt the kind of laughter that forgives everything.

Her phone buzzed.

Hope flickered – then died. Breaking News Alert. Someone else’s crisis was interrupting her entire world, hanging in limbo.

The clouds overhead were stretched tight as ripped paper, the remnants of something once whole. The wind picked up rapidly and scattered her hair, bringing that salt-mineral smell of deep water where light cannot penetrate. In the surface of the lake, she saw her own fractured image – wobbling – a woman broken into pieces by the ripples.

“I was scared,” she whispered to no one.

She took a breath. A real one, not those shallow, nervous ones she had been sucking in all day. And pressed send.

The message disappeared into nothing – into everything — like a prayer she barely believed in. Her hands shook, but not from cold.

Heart stopped.

Work Group Chat.

She laughed, a mixture of relief and something unnamable. The waiting would now begin. He may never respond. He may respond with anger. Or he may – she could hardly bring herself to hope – respond with something softer.

But here’s what she finally realized, watching that gray water stretch to forever: it’s not about making the perfect apology or guaranteeing some outcome. It’s about the terrible math of risk. It’s about disturbing your own silence before it petrifies into permanent silence.

She didn’t have an answer yet.

But she felt lighter anyway — that strange sense of weightlessness of moving toward something rather than away.