There are things I never said.
Not because I didn't want to say them, but because I didn't know how. Because the words I needed didn't exist in the language I was taught. Because sometimes, the sentence wasn't the message—the silence after it was.
That's where I've always lived.
In the hush that follows a line.
In the stillness after punctuation.
In the quiet between sentences.
---
I used to believe writing was all about the words. The right turn of phrase, the perfect metaphor, the way language could pull emotion from the ribcage like thread from a needle.
But then I started noticing what lingered in the pauses. The ache at the end of a paragraph. The way my chest tightened between lines, even when nothing was being said. It was the space that carried weight. The silence that shaped the truth.
My first teacher told me, "Write what you know."
I wrote what I thought I knew: birthdays, broken hearts, beauty I could see.
But what I felt?
That was always too quiet to catch.
A whisper between bold declarations.
A sigh between loud lines.
That's where the real voice lived.
Not in what I could explain, but in what I couldn't.
---
There was a boy once.
Not a love story, not really.
But he was someone who saw me—not the version I performed, but the version I tried to edit out. The uncertain one. The one that always second-guessed the last sentence.
We shared notebooks, not kisses.
Ideas, not promises.
One afternoon, I showed him a piece I had written—a personal essay I hadn't dared read aloud.
He read it in silence. Slowly. Deliberately.
And when he finished, he looked up at me and said, "The line that hit me wasn't a line. It was right after you wrote 'I tried, but I couldn't say it.' That space… that pause… it felt like everything you were too scared to admit."
I didn't know what to say.
He closed the notebook and said, "Sometimes, the quiet is the confession."
That stayed with me. Not the moment, but the meaning of it.
Sometimes, we speak loudest when we stop speaking.
---
There are days when I sit at my desk with a blank page in front of me and just… listen.
Not to music.
Not to the world.
But to the words that don't come.
I listen to the pauses in my thoughts, the breaks between what I want to say and what I'm afraid of saying.
That's where the story is. That's where the voice is hiding.
It's in the fear.
The space.
The breath.
It's in the quiet between sentences.
---
When I started submitting work to journals, editors would often comment, "This could use more action," or "You have strong imagery, but the pacing drops."
They didn't understand I wasn't writing to move. I was writing to hold still.
I wanted readers to sit in the silence with me.
To feel what I wasn't saying.
To recognize the way grief doesn't shout—it lingers.
The way shame doesn't speak—it waits.
The way love doesn't always arrive with a bang—sometimes, it's a slow breath between sentences.
---
There was a poem I wrote once. It only had seven lines. Simple. Sparse.
Someone asked me why it was so short.
I told them it wasn't short. It was just complete.
They didn't understand.
But a few weeks later, a friend came across that same poem and texted me:
"Why did I cry after reading this? I don't even know what it's about."
I smiled. Not because I wanted her to cry. But because she heard what I didn't say. She sat with the stillness long enough to feel it.
The words were the doorway.
But the silence—that was the room.
---
I've started paying attention to silence in everyday life.
The pause after someone says, "I'm fine."
The moment between "I love you" and "Goodbye."
The hush of a phone line just before someone hangs up.
The stretch of seconds between reading a message and choosing not to respond.
We live so much in those gaps.
In what isn't said.
In what we're too careful—or too broken—to speak aloud.
And maybe that's where writing really lives.
Not on the page, but between the lines.
In the in-betweens. The echoes. The hesitation.
---
I used to be afraid of writing something too quiet.
Something that wouldn't shout or impress or demand to be remembered.
But now, I chase the quiet.
I write to discover it.
To hold it in my hands.
To share it like a secret passed between kindred ghosts.
Because in this world that never stops talking, silence is a revolution.