It had been four days since they returned from Violet's childhood home, and yet the air still felt heavy with the scent of memories she couldn't quite shake. There were the obvious changes—she cooked rasam twice, and even called her mother just to say she missed her. But there were subtler ones too.
She wasn't afraid to sit with silence anymore.
And she wasn't afraid to write again.
That morning, Violet pulled open the tall windows of their sunlit apartment, letting the breeze stir the scattered papers on her desk. Adam was still asleep, half-tangled in the bedsheets, one arm slung over her side of the bed like he could feel her absence even in dreams.
She had tiptoed away to write.
It had been months since she wrote anything real, anything for herself. The world had tried to mold her poetry into something performative—award-winning, palatable, profitable—but somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like hers.
But now, it was different.
There was no audience.
Only honesty.
Her fingers hovered over her laptop keys, hesitant, before she finally typed:
"I am not the wound / I am the whole body that heals."
It wasn't perfect, but it was true.
She smiled. For the first time in weeks, her hands moved freely. The words came in waves—soft, certain, and hers.
---
Adam eventually stirred, his hair a tousled mess, his voice groggy. "You're writing again."
She turned around in her chair. "Is it that obvious?"
He rubbed his eyes. "You look lighter. Like you shed some invisible weight."
"I did," she said softly. "Turns out I've been carrying silence for too long."
Adam walked over, kissed her temple, and peered at the screen. "Are you gonna let me read it?"
"Not yet," she said, though her smile hinted that maybe soon, she would.
---
Later that day, they visited an old bookstore downtown. Adam wanted to find a vintage photography book, and Violet just wanted to wander.
The bookstore was oddly comforting—dusty shelves, crooked aisles, the smell of old paper like perfume.
As they browsed, Adam paused in front of a shelf labeled Journals & Sketchbooks. He pulled out a leather-bound one with gold-edged pages.
"This feels like something you'd fill in one sleepless night."
She took it from him and ran her fingers along the spine.
"Only if you promise to take photos of my messy handwriting and post it with pretentious captions."
"Done," he said.
Violet laughed, and the sound of it made the old man at the counter glance up and smile to himself.
---
Back home, they sat cross-legged on the living room floor, surrounded by scattered books and coffee cups. Adam was editing photos on his laptop, but kept sneaking glances at Violet as she scribbled into her new journal.
"What if we hosted a tiny art show?" she said suddenly.
Adam looked up. "What kind of art show?"
"Just something small. A weekend thing. You hang your photos. I read some new poems. Maybe even collaborate. A little gallery in a corner café. Invite people who care about art and stories and tea with too much sugar."
He tilted his head. "Are you serious?"
She nodded. "For the first time in a long time, yeah."
Adam leaned back, his grin spreading slowly. "I like this version of you."
"What version is that?"
"The one who doesn't wait for permission to live out loud."
---
The next few weeks became a blur of preparation.
Violet wrote with a kind of wild honesty she hadn't touched since her college days—pages and pages of raw verse that left her tear-streaked and trembling, but free. Adam curated a selection of his photos—portraits of strangers in transit, intimate stills of Violet on rooftops, abandoned bicycles in the rain.
They called their event: Light Between the Cracks.
"It's not about perfection," Violet told him one evening. "It's about presence."
He nodded. "And resilience."
They rented out a small bohemian café on the edge of the city. The walls were painted in soft pastels, the chairs mismatched, and fairy lights hung like constellations across the ceiling. It felt exactly right.
The night of the show, Violet wore a long maroon dress and a simple gold chain. Adam wore a black shirt rolled at the sleeves, camera slung casually around his neck.
People trickled in—friends, neighbors, strangers who'd seen a flyer and felt curious. Her mother sent flowers. Maya and Theo showed up with homemade brownies. Even Mr. Caldwell, Violet's old poetry professor, arrived with a thermos of spiced chai and tears in his eyes.
"You found your voice again," he whispered, after her reading.
"No," she corrected gently. "I stopped burying it."
---
The last poem Violet read that evening was the one she'd written in her journal, the one Adam had watched come to life line by line.
"I was never meant to be quiet.
I was meant to echo.
Through bruised ribcages and broken fences.
Through late nights and lost years.
I was meant to echo love.
And loss.
And every note in between."
There was silence after she finished. Not the awkward kind, but the reverent kind—the kind where everyone exhales at once, feeling something they hadn't known they needed to feel.
Adam stepped forward and kissed her hand.
"I think we did something beautiful," he whispered.
She nodded, her eyes shimmering. "We let people see us. And I didn't disappear."
---
After the guests left, after the lights dimmed and the music faded, Violet and Adam sat on the café floor surrounded by empty wine glasses and half-eaten cupcakes.
"Would you have believed this two years ago?" she asked, leaning against him.
"No," he admitted. "But I would've believed in you."
She tilted her head. "Even when I didn't?"
"Especially then."
Violet tucked herself into his side, feeling the shape of her life beginning to shift—not perfectly, not suddenly, but undeniably.
And somewhere inside her chest, where grief had once built walls, something new had started to bloom.
Not healing.
Not closure.
But continuation.
---