The Weight of Unspoken Things

The light catches the dust motes dancing in the air, each one a tiny ghost of moments passed. He says I’ve changed, that there's a quietness about me now where loudness used to be.
He doesn’t know the noise was all for show, a desperate attempt to fill the echoing spaces within myself. The spaces he unknowingly began to occupy with just a simple glance.
The chipped paint on this cabinet… it reminds me of imperfections, how they hold stories and textures that smooth surfaces never could. I trace its outline with my fingers, remembering his hand brushing against mine as we were selecting furniture for this new apartment – the one where he expects everything to feel like ‘home’.
He thinks silence is comfortable. He hasn’t learned it can be a battlefield.
I wear this dress because it feels… hopeful. A fragile green, reminiscent of spring after a long winter. It's foolish, perhaps, to seek solace in fabric and colour when the chill resides within my own bones.
He will return. He always does. And I’ll offer him tea, and a smile that doesn’t quite reach my eyes, and continue to build this quiet life where the weight of unspoken things grows heavier with each passing day.

Editor: Deep Sea