Some silences echo louder than words ever could.
It's been three days since D.K.'s voice note. Three days of tea left half-drunk, of paragraphs started and abandoned, of messages from Elian that I haven't found the courage to answer.
Not because I don't care. But because I do. Too much. In ways that feel dangerous.
Thursday morning begins with fog. The city wears it like a borrowed coat, heavy and unfamiliar. I watch it curl around the buildings from my balcony, hands wrapped around a warm mug. I think about calling Mira. Then I don't.
Instead, I take the long way to the library. Past the bookstore where I first saw D.K. reading alone in the corner. Past the music shop Elian once pointed out and said, "That's where I go when I feel like disappearing without vanishing."
Every place I go seems to carry someone's shadow.
Inside the library, I tuck myself into the back corner. It's quiet,my kind of quiet, the kind that asks nothing of me. For a while, I write. Small things. Observations. Words that don't belong to anything yet.
The heart does not break clean. It crumbles, like a sugar cube under rain.
A soft voice pulls me out of my spiral.
"That's a beautiful line."
I look up. A girl,mid-twenties, copper braids piled into a halo, thick-framed glasses. She has the kind of calm that feels earned. Like someone who's seen storms and decided not to drown in them.
"Thanks," I say.
She points to my notebook. "Do you write professionally?"
I hesitate. "Sometimes. Mostly I rewrite and delete."
She laughs. "Same. I'm Jordan. MFA poetry student. I basically live here."
We shake hands. She sits across from me without asking, but it doesn't feel invasive. Just… natural. Like the universe is nudging me toward connection.
"You look like someone running from a metaphor," she says, tilting her head.
I snort. "Aren't we all?"
She smiles. "What's yours?"
I think. Then I answer, "The one about learning to be loved without being erased."
She nods slowly. "That's a hard one. But worth chasing."
Jordan and I talk for hours. About poetry. Family. The fear of being too much, and the ache of being not enough. She tells me about her ex who used to call her "intimidating" like it was a flaw.
"I used to apologize for my ambition," she says. "Now I just buy better lipstick."
I laugh.
When we part, she presses a torn sheet of notebook paper into my palm. "If you ever want to workshop. Or just… breathe beside someone."
I tuck it into my notebook without looking at it. Some things are better held close before they're read.
Later that evening, Elian texts again.
Elian: Are we okay?
I type a hundred replies. Delete them all.
Then finally:
Me: I think I'm lost.
His reply is almost immediate.
Elian: That's okay. I have maps.
I don't cry. But my chest aches the way the sky does before rain.
I put on a sweater and walk. Past the bakery Mira loved. Past the mural D.K. helped paint one summer. I think about what it means to move forward when your ghosts still walk beside you.
Back home, I light a candle. The kind that smells like cedar and forgiveness.
And I write.
Not for an editor. Not for a deadline. Just for me.
About absence. And presence. About Jordan's laughter and Elian's maps. About D.K.'s silences and Mira's maybe.
I write until the sky goes black and the tea goes cold.
And somewhere in the spaces between the lines, I find a piece of myself I didn't know I'd lost.