It took me five full minutes to move.
Not in the way people say that to be poetic, but literally. My body didn't respond. My feet stayed planted. My hand gripped the edge of the bookshelf like it was the only real thing in the room.
His voice was still in my ears. Not echoing ... that would've been easier , but curling around something deep in my lungs, like smoke from a letter set on fire.
I watched the back door long after it had shut behind him. I imagined it still swinging, imagined I still had time to follow him, imagined there was something I could say that would make sense of all the things I hadn't.
But I stayed.
Not because I didn't want to go.
But because I knew if I did, I would either say too much, or nothing at all.
And both would ruin what that poem had dared to keep whole.
Mercy found me just as I was about to leave.
She didn't speak. Just stepped in beside me like we were mid-conversation and said, "Come on. I know a place."
I nodded, grateful for the choice I didn't have to make.
We walked three blocks to a quiet little diner that still smelled like burnt toast and old jazz records. The booths were cracked vinyl. The lighting was soft and yellow, like memory.
She ordered pie. I ordered tea. Neither of us touched either.
"I take it you saw the ending," she said gently.
I looked at her. "I wasn't ready for it."
"No one ever is," she said. "That's why it's good writing."
I smiled despite myself.
"You're not going to text him, are you?" she asked, sipping water like we were talking about something simple.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I've written the message five times and deleted it four."
She raised an eyebrow. "What happened to the fifth?"
"It's sitting in my drafts. Like a coward."
She leaned in. "Or like someone who still believes in timing."
I went home alone.
I opened the draft again. The message wasn't long , just the bare bones of a truth I didn't know how to decorate.
I heard your words. They held more than I knew how to answer.
I'm sorry I left so much unsaid.
I don't know what I'm ready for. But I'm here.
I stared at it for fifteen minutes before I hit save and not send.
The next day passed in a hush. Even the city seemed quieter. Like the world was giving me room to process, or maybe daring me to speak.
I spent the afternoon rereading old poems I'd written before I met D.K. They felt like someone else's voice. Like I was excavating someone I used to be before this version of me , the one who watched someone walk away with grace instead of bitterness ,even existed.
In the margins of one page, I'd scribbled:
"Maybe softness is the most radical thing we have left."
I underlined it.
Twice.
Later that evening, I took a long walk to the park near the waterfront. The sky was all bruised lilac and gold, the kind of sunset that makes you forget how many things you've left unfinished.
There was a man on a bench sketching people with a charcoal pencil. He looked up as I passed.
"You have the face of someone who just lost a poem," he said.
I paused. "Or found one."
He grinned. "Same thing."
We didn't speak again.
But it felt like the universe reminding me: this is how art works. It shows up in strangers. In silences. In exits. And maybe most of all, in the ache you carry long after the sound is gone.
That night, I opened a blank document.
No title. No pressure. Just space.
I wrote until 2 a.m.
Not about D.K.
Not yet.
But about the courage it takes to stay soft in a world that keeps demanding edges. About how some love stories are more about becoming than belonging. About how timing is less a clock and more a condition of the soul.
When I stopped writing, I didn't feel finished.
But I didn't feel stuck, either.
A few days passed.
I didn't send the message.
Instead, I sent a poem.
Posted it anonymously on a forum we both used sometimes. Not tagged. Not titled. Just placed it in the world like a seed you hope finds the right soil.
It read:
You asked me what silence means.
I think it means I'm still learning
how to speak without breaking what I love.
I didn't expect a reply.
But later that night, someone posted a response in the same thread.
It was just one line:
Then break me carefully.
I don't know what comes next.
But I do know this: I'm not writing around the truth anymore.
I'm writing toward it.
Even if it trembles.
Even if it bleeds.
Even if it means learning how to stand still in the doorway a little longer , not waiting, but witnessing.
The moment I choose softness again.
And again.
And again.