Sleep came, but not gently. It crept in through the cracks of my exhaustion, heavy and uneven, dragging with it a darkness that didn’t quite feel like rest. Dreams came slow, hazy, uncertain — like old photographs left out in the rain. In them, she was always there. The same smile, the same warmth in her voice. But she never spoke words I could understand. Her lips moved, her eyes begged, yet the sound never reached me. It was like watching someone through glass — close enough to touch, yet impossibly far away. I reached out for her in that dream, but as always, she faded — first her hands, then her eyes, then the color of her hair melting into the gray of nothing. When I woke, the pillow beneath me was damp. Maybe from sweat. Maybe not. The room was dark, but the kind of dark that hums — alive, breathing. The moonlight slipped through the half-open curtain, laying a pale trail across the floorboards. It found the edge of my boots by the door, the notebook on my nightstand, and the

It’s strange how quickly a stranger can become part of your silence. Days turned into weeks, and the lake had become our place now. Lena and I never spoke about it — it just happened. The same way dawn slips into morning, unnoticed but inevitable. We didn’t always talk. Sometimes, we just existed near each other — her sketching, me staring at the water, both of us pretending not to wonder what the other was thinking. But little by little, the walls between us started to crumble. Not with loud confessions or dramatic moments, but with small things. A shared smile. A quiet question. The kind of honesty that slips out when you’re too tired to pretend anymore. ⸻ One morning, she brought two cups of coffee. “I figured you’d be here,” she said, handing me one. “Do I look that predictable?” I asked, half-smiling. “Maybe. But in a good way. Some routines are safe.” Her words lingered longer than they should have. Safe. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt that. The

The world is quiet here. Too quiet. It’s the kind of silence that doesn’t soothe — it confronts. When I first came to this town, I thought silence would save me. That it would dull the noise of memories, the echoes of laughter that turned into arguments, the sound of her voice saying my name like it meant forever. Now, the silence feels like an enemy I can’t outrun. It creeps into my room at night, sits with me at the table, walks with me down the empty streets. I live in a cabin at the edge of the woods — a small wooden structure that smells like rain and old pine. Some mornings, I wake before the sun, make coffee I never finish, and sit by the window watching the fog slide over the lake. The water is always still, like it’s waiting for something to break the surface. Sometimes, I think I am the lake — calm on the outside, but underneath, there’s a storm that never ends. It’s been almost a year since I left the city. A year since I walked out on everything I thought I’