She was a friend to silence.
It never asked for her laughter,
never demanded she be more than she was.
The quiet let her breathe,
and in its stillness she could almost forget
the long roads of absence within her heart.

They said she was born for quiet,
for listening to the hush of leaves
and the slow drift of clouds.
And truly, she loved it—

yet within that hush,
a faint ache beat like a second pulse.
No birdcall, no candle flame,
no folded book pressed against her chest
could quiet it completely.

She was not afraid of being alone.
No, that was never her fear.
What unsettled her was how the walls leaned nearer at night,
how the air grew thick with words unsaid,
how loneliness crept in disguised as silence—
and smiled at her like an old companion.

One night, as dusk bled into shadow,
she sat by her window with a cup gone cold.
The silence felt heavier than usual—
not cruel,
but pressing,
as though it wished to be known.

And then,
amid the quiet,
she heard it.

Not a knock.
Not a call.
A hush—
like the breath of someone standing just beyond the glass.

She stilled,
her pulse rising as if to answer.
Perhaps it was only the wind,
slipping through the seams of night.
Yet it carried warmth,
too human, too near,
as though a voice had been waiting all this time
to pass through the cracks of her solitude.

“Lonely,” it whispered—
not accusing, not pitying,
only naming the shape of her ache
with gentleness.

Her lips trembled against the rim of her cup.
And though no one sat with her in the room,
she found herself answering,
her voice little more than breath:

“Yes.
But I do not know how to ask for more.”

Then silence returned.
But it was no longer empty.
It hummed with a fragile promise—
that perhaps she was not as alone
as she had always believed.