Sometimes, it’s not what we said that haunts us, but what we didn’t. The words we swallowed, the feelings we buried, the truths we hid behind half-smiles and quiet nods.
I think about all the things I wanted to tell you. How I wanted to say that your laughter felt like sunlight on days when everything else felt heavy. How your presence made the world quieter, like the calm after a storm. But I never did. I let the words die on my tongue, afraid they might change everything, or worse — change nothing at all.
Maybe we were always better at pretending. Pretending the silence didn’t ache, that the pauses between our conversations weren’t growing wider. We smiled through the cracks, hoping neither of us would notice the pieces breaking beneath the surface.
But now, with distance stretched between us, I feel the weight of everything I never said. I carry it in my chest, in the corners of my mind, in the echoes of your voice that still linger when I’m alone.
I wonder if you carry it too. If you ever feel the heaviness of words unsaid and wonder what might have been different had we been braver — had we spoken instead of staying quiet.
But maybe silence was our way of protecting what we had. Maybe speaking the truth would’ve shattered everything we were trying so hard to hold together. Or maybe it would’ve saved us. I guess we’ll never know.
And so, I sit with these unspoken words, learning to live with their weight, hoping that one day, I’ll no longer feel the need to say them. But the truth is, some words never fade. They linger like shadows, following us wherever we go.
I still remember the way your eyes searched for answers in mine, as if you were waiting for me to say something — anything — that would make it easier for both of us to breathe. But I didn’t. I held back, afraid of what honesty might take away. And now I’m left holding the pieces of those moments, replaying them in my head, searching for ways I could have rewritten the ending.
Sometimes, I wonder if you knew. If you could feel the words pressing against my ribs, begging to be let out. I wonder if you were waiting for me to speak first, or if you were just as afraid as I was. Maybe we were both waiting — waiting for the right moment that never came.
And now, all I’m left with is the echo of everything I never said. The ‘I miss you’ that I whispered into the void when you were no longer there to hear it. The ‘I need you’ that I buried because I was too proud to say it out loud. The ‘I love you’ that I choked on because I didn’t know if you’d say it back.
I wonder if unspoken words ever find their way back to the people they were meant for. Do they travel through time and space, carried by the wind or tucked into dreams? Or do they simply dissolve into nothingness, leaving behind only the ache of regret?
I wish I could go back, even for just a moment, to say what I couldn’t before. To tell you that you mattered more than I ever let on. To tell you that I still carry pieces of you with me, even now, long after you’re gone.
But maybe some things are meant to remain unsaid. Maybe silence has its own kind of poetry — a language only the heart understands. And maybe, just maybe, the words we didn’t say were enough to tell the story we were too afraid to write.
Still, I’ll keep these words with me, even if they never reach you. I’ll hold them close, like a secret I can’t let go of, and hope that somewhere, in some small way, you already knew.
