Smoke After the Rain

You were always someone I admired. Our lives ran alongside each other, parallel, without either of us realizing it. We were there the whole time, close without knowing. Whispered silences carried off like smoke from a fire left empty after the rain. We made s’mores there once, but the memory thins the longer it drifts away.

I always hinted at wanting something more—eyes holding, lips caught between teeth, my hand resting on your knee. I wanted to be let into your world, but I could never quite read you. You were always emotionally distant, yet never physically so. 

I mistook your closeness for permission, your warmth for intention. I learned your habits instead of your thoughts, memorized the way you laughed before understanding what you feared. Being near you felt like standing at a door that never fully opened—close enough to touch the frame, never close enough to cross the threshold.

Our familiarity was intimate, but our distance was even greater. I thought I was obvious—I thought my constant need to be near you revealed what I carried inside. I offered you my heart on a platter in moments when you needed it, believing you would one day do the same. But your heart’s gaze was always unsteady, never fully fixed on me.

I replay our foolish moments as if I’m watching them on a television now, removed from the scene—distance stretching like a film that has gone on too long, lingering past the point where it should have ended.

Sometimes I wonder if you knew what you were doing, or if you were just as unaware as I was, letting the moment stretch because it was easier than naming it. I stayed quiet, hoping you’d choose me without being asked. And maybe that was my mistake—believing that wanting, quietly and patiently, would be enough. 

I ponder if you were just as lost as I was—or if that’s only the version of you I’ve invented to make the ending hurt less. Because if you had wanted something different, you would have said so. You would have reached for me with certainty instead of hesitation, chosen clarity over comfort. Silence, I’ve learned, is its own kind of answer, and I was the one who stayed, listening for a reply that was never coming.