The Silence Between Falling Leaves

The air was cool, the trees celebrating in the wind; their colors burning into bright flames.

I stepped onto the path, leaves crunching beneath my feet. Looking up at the crystal-blue sky, I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, the air carrying memories I hadn’t relived in years.

When I opened them again, I was already at the park. Children ran across the grass, their laughter rippled through the air soft at first, then distant, like a memory replaying in slow motion.

Something about it felt strange, hollow almost, as if I was remembering a life that no longer belonged to me.

I remember when looking at you was so real when the sun kissed your hollow cheeks, and the warmth of your gentle touch brushed against mine. Then you pressed firmly into my gaze, into the unfamiliar spots where I forgot the sound of the misery that haunts my brain. The loud abyss swayed into the darkest depths, into the sea of mine. Your touch so gentle, yet so firm moved through the places no one else could see.

That was when you became my keeper. My savior.

you and me

me and you

we were unbreakable, inseparable from the start. I could not let you go. I did not want to let go. But the pull broke our bond.

Now you’re gone, and I can’t help but yearn for you dream of you. The passion we had, the fire we built, I miss the light we made together. Without you, the spark is gone. The color has left my soul. I need you. I want you. My other half.

The moment when night became too long. I scream for you; I run for you, but I cannot reach you.

The moment when you should be here, waiting for me. Waiting for my ink to press against the empty spaces. The words written on the wall spill all my secrets. Next to me—holding me—bringing me the safety of your arms, wrapping around me like cotton sheets:

so soft, so warm.

Wrapping around me like a long-lost love note that’s never been opened.

Soft crystals trail down my face, dripping onto the page, soaking into every trace of the past. Each drop floods the paper like a quiet storm, washing everything I could never say back into the sea of mine. I drift into slumber, my head resting against the dark wooden bark.

The wind kisses my face as I slip into the dream; where you and I are together again, as if we never left each other’s side.

You might have been the reason I survived; the reason I breathed at all. After you slipped away, my bones cracked under the truth of what I’d lost of what I was still losing. I kept searching for you, clawing at the edges of myself, trying to bring you back into my soul.

Placing you back into my safety chest. Throwing the keys to the ground. Running with you the way I used to.

Sprinting toward the warmth of memory and time back when we could escape the aging, the desperation, the constant ache of not knowing what would come next.

Whisking away, I yearn for your phantom touch; the part of me that once held on so tightly I never questioned who I was. Your grip on those fragments could still bring me to my knees.

The echoes split me in two; past on one side, fear on the other—each rushing through my mind as if neither version of me could protect the other. In the moments I needed you most, I tucked you away. Too far away. Buried beneath the soil of my own silence.

And I prayed you could forgive me for forgetting you, for abandoning you; for only now returning.

A stone lay under an oak tree, the leaves around it impossibly blue… as blue as the version of me I left behind.

I stand over it, dreading those times—those escapes I no longer trust. I walk forward with my shadow torn from its essence, asking where you are. Why did you leave me? Or… did I leave you?

Maybe I was the one who crawled away first. Maybe I was the one who let go. Maybe the words were stolen from you because I refused to speak to them because I refused to see you.

I question why I didn’t trust you when I had the chance. In the year you begged me, “I’m here. Please see me. Don’t forget me, not again.”

You warned me.

“Once you lose me, the memory of me will fade.”

“When you need me, I’ll be here.”

But maybe those words were never real. Maybe I made them up just to survive.

You said you’d stay, but it feels like I’m the one who has to keep fighting for you, for me, for us to finally become one again.

The wind shifts again, brushing against my face like a reminder that time never really stops, even when I do. The world continues quiet, cold, endless—while I stand here, trying to remember who I was before the silence took over.

Maybe I’ve always been slipping through the cracks, unnoticed. Maybe I became so good at surviving that I forgot what it meant to live as me. Not the version others shaped. Not the one built from expectations and fear. But me.

I kneel beside the stone under the oak tree. My hand presses to the bark like it might remember the pieces I’ve forgotten. And for a second, I think I feel her again, the girl I buried.

Not angry. Not lost. Just waiting.

I whisper to her, “I see you now.”

And in the quiet between wind gusts and falling leaves, I let myself believe, maybe this time, I won’t leave her behind.

But then I woke up.

And everything went quiet.

And somewhere between the rustling trees and the ache in my chest,

I think I heard myself whisper back.

Thus, nothing is fake

but yet,

nothing is true.