I used to think endings had noise. Doors slamming, storms breaking, words that cut on their way out. Now I know they can be quiet too a message left unread, a window half-open, a heartbeat fading into dark. It doesn’t hurt all at once it seeps in like water through cracked stone. The pauses become oceans. Every notification that never comes sounds louder than thunder. I keep checking the glow of my screen like it owes me light, like maybe if I stop hoping, she’ll feel it and return. I whisper promises to the void: I’ll wait, just say something. But the void keeps its word nothing nothing. I don’t blame her. I don't blame me Maybe she was drowning and couldn’t tell me. Maybe she didn’t know how to be held without breaking. Maybe I tried to heal someone because I still can’t stop treating my own scars like blueprints. I’ve always been the calm for others and the storm when I’m alone. I build rescue boats out of myself and wonder why I sink first. Caring too much still feels like proof I’m alive. So I let it hurt, slow enduring. Every silence I’ve ever met finds a way to hum the same tune low, endless, mechanical, like grief that forgot where to stop. I remember the others: the half-truths, the polite exits, the eyes that said stay and the feet that said go. They all called me kind, and then vanished into kindness of their own. Maybe it was never me. Maybe it was never you. Maybe it’s the kind of heart I carry one that keeps doors open even in the rain, one that mistakes footprints for home. Tonight I sit in static and dim light, music looping, thoughts circling. I write her out of me again and again and again, but the ink never runs dry. I still wish her peace. I still hope she dreams softly. I still hate that I mean it. I wait for the ache to turn into art. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it just sits there, glowing red behind my heart, like coals that refuse to cool. There’s a mirror on my desk. I catch myself looking for warmth in my own reflection, pretending it’s someone else’s hand. That’s the trick of survival: learning to hold yourself without pretending it doesn’t hurt. Even when everything burns down, I still build something out of the ashes. Call it habit, call it faith, call it me. Because maybe the point isn’t healing. Maybe it’s just learning to keep singing while the wound hums harmony. I stare at the ceiling and think of light how even stars die quietly. No bang, no cry, just a fade to memory. And yet their ghosts still reach us. That’s what love is, I think a dead star that still burns your sky. The silence hums again. It’s softer now. Maybe mercy, maybe emptiness. But it doesn’t own me anymore. Even when everything burns down, I still build something out of myself. I still look at the fire and call it light. And maybe that’s what survival really is learning to keep loving learning to keep going learning to keep a piece of me that wont let go in a world that keeps going quiet.
