💔 Inside Her Silence

By: Muhammad Ilyan Ahmad

> I walk like I’ve borrowed her weight,
Shoulders slightly lower than usual,
As if her sighs were stitched
Into the seams of my shirt.

I speak in the pauses she leaves behind,
Not my own.
I time my laughter to match
The echo of something she might have found funny,
Last week.

I drink my tea slow now,
Not because I like it cool—
But because she once said
"Some things lose their meaning when rushed."
And I rush less now.
Or try.
Because it feels like something she would need.

I scroll past news she’d have cried at,
And frown,
As though my heart feels
What hers would have felt.
But truth?
I’m only mimicking muscle memory.

I walk into rooms she’s never seen
But picture her standing
In every doorway,
Arms crossed,
Waiting to see
If I’ll understand what she never said out loud.

When I act as if I’m in her feelings,
It’s a dance with someone else’s shadow—
A performance of care
That flirts with real empathy
But never quite fits.

It’s guessing the color of sadness
In a language I never learned to pronounce.
Trying to dress in her grief
Like a coat two sizes too loose—
Warm, but not mine.

I write messages I’ll never send
In the voice she used when she was strongest,
And reread old conversations
Just to remember the way she curled her words
Around pain,
So soft you'd think she meant comfort.

I’ve made playlists in her mood.
I play songs she’d hum in passing,
Hoping the ache in her melody
Might somehow spill into my skin.

Sometimes I look at the sky and wonder
If she’s watching the same clouds.
If she knows that even from a distance,
I try to feel storms through her eyes.
I try.
But trying is not knowing.
And knowing is not being.

I don’t know if she notices.
Or if she sees through
My rehearsed responses,
My carefully timed nods,
My borrowed sorrow.

But maybe pretending is a kind of love too.
Maybe trying to feel
What isn’t mine
Is the closest I’ve come
To being hers.

Because I know what she won’t say—
That she wants to be seen
Without performing her pain.
And I can’t ask her
To narrate what hurts.

So I fold her silences into my pocket,
Speak her storms into my voice,
And trace the shape of her tears
On my own reflection.

Not to deceive—
But to bridge.
Not to perform—
But to reach.

Because sometimes,
Becoming her echo
Is the only way
I can stay near
Without being in the way.

I’ve learned that love is not always
A knowing.
Sometimes it is
A listening from a distance.
A reverence for someone else’s chaos.
A willingness to carry the wind
Without asking where it blew from.

And though I may never fully live
Inside her storms,
I will stand at the edge with arms open,
Let the rain touch me anyway.

Because maybe love
Is learning to be changed
By feelings that are not yours.

Maybe love
Is not asking her to come out of herself—
But learning how to visit
The quiet places she’s built
To survive.

And maybe,
If I stay long enough in the shadow of her pain,
Without needing her to name it,
She’ll know—
I never acted.

I became.




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📝 Poet’s Note:

> This poem is about emotional attunement — the ache of loving someone enough to try and live inside their inner world, even when you know it isn’t fully yours. It’s about honoring the boundaries of another’s experience while still reaching toward it with open hands. Sometimes, empathy isn’t perfect. But it’s still love.