I Loved You in Silence

Some loves don't finish with slammed doors or bitter words.

Some loves finish in silence.

Not the quiet kind — the heavy kind. The kind that sticks around after someone's gone. The kind that echoes through empty places, through voicemails that never get returned, through memories that still have the flavor of home.

That was us.

We never had a grand finale. No battle. No final goodbye. Just the slow unraveling of "good morning" into nothing, the quiet slipping from being everything to being strangers who knew each other too well before.

And maybe that is what hurts the most.

That there was not a moment I could pin and say — this is where it fell apart.

We just… unraveled.

I saw it coming. I saw how your texts got shorter. How your smile reached your mouth but not your eyes. How your voice sounded like it was already somewhere else.

And yet, I lingered.

I stayed there because I believed love was enough. I stayed there because I figured if I loved you even harder, you would come back. I had no clue you were already gone and waiting for me to catch up.

And when finally I did — when I stopped wondering, Are you okay? and instead gave the answer myself with silence — I wrote this:

I Loved You in Silence

I didn't love you in fireworks

or grand, sweeping vistas.

I loved you in gentle sighs,

in in-betweens.

In late night "Are you home?"

In "Did you eat today?"

In the way I stood by the door

and waited for you to stay.

I loved you in patience,

waiting too long.

In changing my story

just to fit your song.

I loved you in silence,

where echoes remain.

And now, I am left

with love in the guise of pain.

Others say it's worse to love and lose, but they never say how loss lingers in your ribcage. How birthdays taste sour. How music pierces. How photographs are landmines.

I don't hate you. I wish I could. Hate is less heavy than this pain.

But I still hope you're okay. I hope you're at peace. I hope you heal in ways that I couldn't help you. And I hope, on some quiet night when the world lets its guard down, you think of me — and smile.

Because despite all of it, I'm grateful.

You showed me how much I could feel. You showed me the shape of my heart. And even though you did not stay, you made me realize that I deserve a love that does.