Short Story: A Love That Lived in Silence

This story is shaped by hope, by truth, and by a quiet yearning for what might have been. It drifts from a reality I once held close, a life I wished into existence, now living only in the gentle haze of dreams.

This year, I found sanctuary in writing — where words breathe, where time slows, and where the weight of living loosens its hold. In these stories, I scatter pieces of myself: the echoes of who I was, the tenderness of who I am, and the fragile, luminous possibilities of who I might become.

A Love That Lived in Silence 

"They met the way many quiet stories begin, by accident and routine. Same office Building. Same coffee machine that always jammed at 9:12. He noticed her first because she laughed at things other people missed. She noticed him later, because he listened like it mattered. Soon they were eating lunch together, trading headphones, finishing each other’s sentences with alarming ease. They liked the same books, the same sad songs, the same late-night drives with nowhere to go. It felt rare. It felt easy. For him, the feeling grew roots. One evening, after everyone else had left and the office lights hummed softly, he told her. Not dramatically. Not loudly. Just honestly. He loved her. The word landed between them like something fragile. She wanted to say it back. She felt it bloom in her chest, warm and terrifying. But love, real love, felt like a language she didn’t know how to speak. No one had ever chosen her like that. No one had ever looked at her without flinching. At home, love came with conditions, with fear, with the constant hum of survival. She had learned to make herself small, unnoticeable. Safe. So, she smiled. She thanked him. And she stepped back. He stayed. He stayed through the years as her constant, patient orbit. He never pressured, never blamed. Just waited, quietly, painfully—hoping time would soften her fear. She kept him close enough to feel his warmth, far enough to protect herself. Every almost. Every not yet. Until one night, years later, something in her broke open. She wrote him a letter because saying it out loud still felt impossible. She wrote about how she loved him, how she always had, how fear had been louder than hope. She wrote about wanting to be brave. When she gave it to him, her hands were shaking. He read it. He smiled—sadly. And then, slowly, he changed. He didn’t disappear all at once. He just became harder to reach. Replies came later. Conversations grew careful. The warmth she had leaned on for years cooled into distance. Maybe he was tired of waiting. Maybe the love he carried had finally worn him thin. She was confused. Hurt. Ashamed for being late to her own courage. Neither of them said the wrong thing. They said nothing at all. Silence, ego, fear—each did its quiet work. Eventually, the space between them became too wide to cross. Then three years passed. No messages. No updates. Just memories that refused to fade. She loved him still. Strangely, fiercely—stronger in absence than she’d ever allowed herself in presence. Some nights she almost reached out, fingers hovering over his name, wondering if he ever thought of her. If he missed her the way she missed him. If love could survive being unattended. She never sent the message. Some loves don’t end. They just become questions. And somewhere, in another version of time, maybe they chose differently. But in this one, their love lived on as a quiet, permanent mystery - not a tragedy, not a failure, just something beautiful that never learned how to exist."