Month: July 2025

Sound didn’t wait outside. It never does. It crashed in, uninvited. Unannounced. All-consuming in the narrow hallway, filling the space before I could embrace it.

I heard it before I saw it, sharp echoes of boots on tile, the low murmur of someone talking too loud into a phone, the laugh that wasn’t meant for me but landed anyway.

By the time I reached the room, Sound was already there. Sprawled across furniture, stretched out on the floorboards, tucked into every corner like it had always belonged. Moving constantly around me, a dance of focus darting between reality and paranoia. Rattled windowpanes. Clicking pens. Humming fans. It all tapped restless fingers against my skull.

I couldn’t hear my own thoughts over it. Couldn’t remember what quiet was. Not when Sound buzzed in the light, whistled in the wind, purred from the fridge.

Sound was clever like that. Knew how to mimic joy in the echo of safety. A song from a memory I didn’t ask for, pulling at threads I thought I’d knotted shut. The gentle coo of a mourning dove in the early morning. Static from a TV on the wrong channel.

It wrapped itself around me, like the conversation at a party I didn’t want to attend, where every voice expects an answer and none of them pause to breathe.

Sometimes Sound became the people I know. Not the real ones, but suggestions of them. My name called from another room. Footsteps on the stairs. A caught behind a closed door. Enough to make me turn my head. Enough to make me wonder if I was ever truly alone.

I tried to shut it out. I tried to drown it out, tried to block Sound from my mind. I turned up the music, covered my ears, screamed until my throat was hoarse and lungs empty. But Sound just layered itself, noise upon noise, until every distraction had their own ghost.

Because Sound is persistent. Sometimes it’s just a presence, a background character in the storyline of your life. The hiss of a steam in a café. The clatter of cutlery on ceramic. A phone buzzing on a table.

But sometimes, Sound forgets to soften its edges, and the background becomes a roar you cannot escape.

Photo courtesy of Dibakar Roy

Silence arrived quickly, like it had nowhere else to be but in this small room where I sat alone. It arrived without notice, no announcing of its presence, no demand for attention. Just a presence that settled next to me, heavy as a woollen cloak draped over my shoulders, a pressing weight, soft and unyielding.

At first I tried to ignore it, turning from the absence of sound and pretending it was nothing more than empty air, a stranger in an empty room. But silence wasn’t empty. It leaned closer, a watcher to my thoughts, a waiting breath I couldn’t exhale.

It didn’t speak, just sat. Listening. Lurking. Looming. Undeniable with each rasp against my neck. Impossible to truly forget.

I wanted to break it, shatter the quiet with noise or words. I tried shouting into the emptiness, filling the space with music, laughter, anything but this heavy, dragging quiet. Silence always came back. Stepping into the room when each sound faded away, returning to that open seat beside me.

So I turned.

It didn’t flinch. Didn’t shift. It held its ground, staring knowingly through my hesitation. A breath on my neck daring me to speak. But I didn’t, words tangled in my throat, swallowed by the consuming weight.

Instead, I reached out, fingers brushing the shape, cool and still, like the calm before a storm. Silence didn’t pull away. It settled deeper, folding around me like a secret that had waited too long to be told, soft as dust, yet heavy as the weight I’d carried all along.

And it was only then I realised Silence wasn’t empty at all. It was the quiet language of everything I couldn’t say.

To me you’re just a chapter,
A season written in pawprints and fur.
A handful of years folded softly between heartbreaks,
A quiet echo of love that will always endure.

Your character will come to an end,
Pages turned from the start to the blur.
Stories unfold and new chapters begin,
But for you, I am all that you were.

I am the voice that wakes you from your dreams,
The steady rhythm beneath your paws.
The warmth in every lunchtime nap,
The quiet comfort in the world’s small flaws.

While my life spins onwards, far and wide,
A thousand stories yet to be told.
You live in each moment, unchanging and still,
Where my love is the only world you hold.

No other voices call you home,
No other touch as soft or sure.
In every glance, a silent promise,
That here, with me, you are secure.

So when my chapters twist and change,
And I am lost in dreams anew,
Remember, in your world of now,
My whole book lives within you.

Once there was a garden, hidden deep within a quiet heart. It grew a tapestry of blossoms that whispered colours only the soul could see. Blushing roses beneath the gentle caress of moonlight, porcelain lilies brimming with dreams, ivy curling around ancient stone like the fingers of time. The air was a perfumed breath of lavender and the wind hummed lullabies through dancing leaves.

But soft words were the sunlight, warm and tender, nurturing quiet grace. They reached into the darkest corners, coaxing life from shadows where silence once held sway. In this garden, every whispered hope was a fragile bud, and every sigh a gentle rain that fell softly to the earth below.

Each flower a seed that fell from unseen hands, words scattered like whispered promises in a forgotten language. Petals bloomed in the hush between breaths, woven from the threads of laughter, sorrows and dreams across time. Vines were sentences of gentle insistence, binding stories together and shielding cracks of broken vows.

Over time, the garden changed. Roots became tangled regrets, and the rose’s thorns wept from memories too sharp to forget. Brambles crept quietly with silent intent, born from doubt and fractured truths, choking the light.

Once delicate paths grew narrow, overgrown with weeds that spoke in brittle tongue and bitterness. And the ivy, once a gentle protector, tightened its hold, cracking stones with the strain of untold stories.

Sweet air turned thick, suffocating on longing and loss. And the harmonic wind of lullabies turned to a rustle, like pages torn from a book no one dared to finish.

Yet still, the garden listened. Waiting beneath the weight of words, every echo that clung to leaves like morning due. There was tenderness to the ruin, as if even the sorrow had roots, and the grief too could flower.

All it took was a single word, spoken with care. Not to erase the thorns, or chase away the vines. But in that hush, a bud trembled, quivering in the quiet as if weighing the silence that followed, unsure if this word, too, might bruise.

But it stayed. And in its stillness, the garden shifted. A breath returning after a long-held headache.

There was no undoing the overgrowth, no erasing stories etched in bark and thorn. But the word, just one, was a key, not a cure. It opened a path, narrow, tender and true.

The heart, that quiet soil from which all things rose, learned again how to hold without hurting, how to speak without scarring. Not because the weight of words vanished, but because finally they carried with care. All it took was a single word carried gently enough to let something begin again.