7. Nothing Happened

Nothing happened That's what I tell people No shouting through walls No broken glass No slammed doors No long black cars Pulling up outside the house Nobody left in the middle of the night Nobody came home drunk Nobody disappeared Nobody scared me At least not on purpose We had birthdays School photos Christmas decorations Family holidays Packed lunches Bedtimes The heating mostly worked The roof stayed where it belonged The neighbours waved The dog got old The years went by Looking perfectly normal Maybe that's why It took so long To understand the shape of it Because absence doesn't leave fingerprints Silence doesn't make headlines Distance doesn't bruise And loneliness Can sit beside you for years Without introducing itself Nobody asked What was wrong Not because they didn't care Because nobody noticed Not because they were cruel Because everybody seemed busy With surviving their own lives I became easy I became helpful I became quiet The kind of child Adults describe as wonderful When they mean invisible Nothing happened Nothing happened I keep saying it Like a witness statement Like a prayer Like maybe repetition Will make it feel less true Or more true I still haven't decided Sometimes I envied people With cleaner stories A villain A disaster A moment they could point to On a map And say There That's where everything changed But my story was weather Slow weather Crossing decades Quiet enough That nobody closed the windows Maybe love was there Just untranslated Maybe affection arrived Missing half the words Maybe everyone thought Someone else was saying them Maybe silence travels Through generations Like an heirloom Nobody remembers buying But somehow everybody owns Nothing happened No crime scene No evidence No villain waiting at the end Just rooms full of people Trying their best And missing each other By inches For years Nothing happened And somehow That was enough To leave a mark Sometimes The hardest wound to explain Is the one Nobody meant to make