The Weight of Unspoken Chapters

The scent of vanilla and something like old paper always settles around these hours. It’s a foolish comfort, perhaps, to find solace in borrowed stories when my own feels perpetually unfinished.
He sends me little things – not grand gestures, never those. Just a line from a poem he thinks I'll understand, or a photograph of the cafe where we first spoke. Enough to stir something, and then just as quickly, the quiet returns.
I trace the spine of the book with my finger, the paper soft beneath my touch. It’s been weeks since that last message, but his ghost lingers in every corner of this room, a comfortable weight pressing against my chest. I wonder if he feels it too – this unspoken pull, this shared language of almost-saying.
The candle flickers, casting dancing shadows on the wall. I close my eyes, and for a moment, the boundaries between pages blur with reality. In that space, maybe there's room for both our stories to find their endings - or perhaps, just perhaps, begin.

Editor: Lane Whisperer