The Silence Between Us

The Silence Between Us

There was no fight.

No shouting.

No broken plates or slammed doors.

No dramatic exits or final messages in all caps.

Just a quiet shifting of air,

a breath you forgot to take,

a goodbye that never bothered to say its name.

The silence didn’t come all at once.

It crept in slowly.

Like dust in corners, like rot in the floorboards.

We didn’t notice it until it was everywhere.

I still remember your laugh.

The sharp kind, the kind that pulled people into its orbit.

You were the center of every room.

I just happened to orbit closest.

And maybe that was the problem—

maybe I was always circling,

and you were always drifting.

We used to talk about everything.

Or maybe we didn’t.

Maybe we just talked about enough to pretend we did.

Now I talk to the air.

I rehearse the things I’d say

if we ever spoke again.

Like:

"I miss you."

"I’m sorry if I didn’t try hard enough."

"I didn’t know silence could be so loud."

When did it start?

When you stopped texting back right away?

When our conversations got shorter?

When I realized I was the only one asking, “When are we hanging out again?”

Or maybe it was when I told you something real

and you changed the subject.

You always hated conflict.

Said it felt like drowning.

So maybe you learned to hold your breath

and just drifted deeper

until I couldn’t follow.

I didn’t want to fight you.

I just wanted to find you again

in the space where we used to live—

that warm place between jokes and secrets and 3 a.m. truth spills.

The silence between us is a wall now.

Not brick, not concrete—

but something worse.

Something like memory.

Something like pride.

Something like the fear that says,

“If you reach out now, they won’t reach back.”

People ask about you.

I say you’re doing well.

I smile like my chest isn’t caving in.

And sometimes, I check your profile.

You look happy.

You look free.

Like the past we shared

was just a chapter you finished reading.

Some nights I wonder what I’d say

if I ran into you at a coffee shop,

or a bookstore,

or somewhere painfully ordinary.

Would I pretend I was fine?

Would you?

Would we smile and lie with our teeth and say,

“We should catch up sometime,”

when we both know we never will?

Here’s the truth I never said:

I loved you.

Not romantically.

Not in the way that writes poems with roses and heat.

But in the way that sees someone

and wants to stay.

I wanted to stay.

But you were already gone.

And maybe I wasn’t enough.

Maybe I wasn’t what you needed anymore.

Or maybe people outgrow each other the way trees shed leaves:

not out of anger,

but because it’s time.

Still—

I wish you’d told me.

I wish you’d said something.

A whisper.

A warning.

A final goodbye.

Instead, I’m left talking to this silence.

Nursing it like a wound.

Filling it with imagined conversations,

half-truths, and old jokes that still echo when the world gets too quiet.

I don’t hate you.

I don’t blame you.

But I carry you.

In playlists.

In places.

In passing thoughts that sting like splinters.

Maybe one day the silence will break.

Maybe I’ll get a message,

or I’ll send one.

Maybe we’ll meet again,

and the words will pour out like a dam finally cracked.

Or maybe we won’t.

Maybe the silence is the last thing we’ll share.

And I’ll have to be okay with that.

But until then—

I will sit here,

in the space between what we were

and what we never said.

And I will listen.

To the silence between us.

Because sometimes,

the loudest endings

make no sound at all.