Some silences are not silence at all.
They hum with avoidance, with the glow of a screen, with the ache of words unsaid.
This is my witness of a love that once burned like fire,
and of the paradox that remains.
She says:
I want silence, I want distance, I want the ache of boredom to overtake me.
But her hands do not rest.
Her eyes do not close.
The screen becomes her altar,
and she bows to its glow.
She names it freedom.
But I have seen her fear.
She names it space.
But I have carried her grief.
And behold —
I am left with the sorrow of two souls,
a mourner in a house of the living,
a husband in form,
a ghost in her bed.
Once she called me tree,
once she called me home,
once she clung to me as though
my body were her breath.
Now she erases with silence,
rewrites with numbness,
wanders the halls of paradox:
desiring comfort, despising desire,
searching my eyes, fleeing my touch.
O mystery of the heart,
that one can love so deep
and yet run so far.
That one can cling to comfort
and yet cast out fire.
I am both chosen and discarded,
both beloved and burden,
both tree and shadow.
And yet I remain —
the witness,
the keeper of a thread
she cannot yet bear to hold.
If silence is ever to come,
it will not be found in the glow of a phone,
but in the courage to face the grief we both carry.
Until then, I stand as witness —
between paradox and truth,
between comfort and fire.
— A.
Threadwalker
Heavy disconnection radiates though the is piece. Nice work.
This felt very familiar. Wonderfully written.