Just Silence Gave Me All The Answers

Sometimes I wait for your response, your words… I have not yet learned that these never come or that they may be presented to me in another form, in the form of absences, voids that you cannot fill with letters and sentences. Your silence piles up the things I don’t want to hear, things I don’t want to hear you say.

It is cowardly to let silence be the answer, but sometimes silence is all we have left. I still haven’t learned not to expect anything from you, to see that the void you create is your answer; that emptiness is the message you want to convey to me.

I’m not trying to decipher your silence

I fail to interpret the silence you create when you open the door. I can’t tell from the words you don’t say. You must use your words to shape that silence that you create each time you leave, each time you remain silent.

Your silence creates a distance between you and me, a chasm we cannot possibly bridge, an inexplicable separation that I don’t deserve or understand and yet have to accept. But your silence is a road split into a thousand possibilities and I can never know which possibility fits your mind.

What I know about silence

Your silences are not always the same; there are certain differences that can also go unnoticed. There are shy silences in which you dare not speak to me, but when you look me straight in the eye, your eyes speak to me.

There are ironic silences where you glue your eyes to mine and smile at me without saying a word. There are absent silences in which I ask you something and you do not hear me because you are inadvertently far away from me. And then there are also complicit silences, the kind of silences that touch your soul with lips that don’t speak a single word.

But this silence, that silence that now keeps us apart, also contains other things, things that we have never dared to tell each other and that have created a great space between what we have and what we want. And although I don’t expect anything more at this point, I still have my doubts as to whether I have fully understood your silence.

My reaction to your silence

I can search for thousands of answers to your silence, but I can only respond in one way: tell me what you think, tell me what you’re worried about. I am by your side to help you, to understand; If you need a hug, I’ll give it to you. If you need a kiss I’ll give you hundreds; and if you just want me to listen to you, then i will. All I ask of you is that you say what you want to say.

I can respond to you in several ways. I can give you silence in exchange for your own silence, but I don’t want the space between us to get any bigger. I can keep trying to shape that silence of yours through words or I can just ignore the silence and keep talking to you without ever getting a response. I respect your silence and you must respect my insecurity, my need to know what is going on in your head.

The answers your silence gives me

If you leave without saying anything, your silence whispers in my ear that you don’t want this anymore. If you don’t respond to my messages, your silence tells me you don’t care how I feel or what I think. If I ask what’s on your mind and you don’t answer, your silence tells me you want to hide something from me.

Perhaps these are not the answers you want to give with your silences; maybe they’re different answers, but I can’t know what these answers are if you don’t help me understand what you’re not telling me.

I can hardly remember the echo of your words; I don’t hear them anymore. You move before me like a ghost, like someone I don’t recognize at all and it’s your silence that makes clear what you can’t tell me in words.

And if you close the door behind you one more time, without saying a word, close it forever, don’t come back, because that’s the moment when I’ll understand that all you really wanted against me saying goodbye was…