in the silence of what wasn't said

i’m back with another poem; this time, i’m using one of

holls

’s september prompts. it feels like i can only write poetry when i’m given prompts and that kinda sucks. i want to be able to write poetry without any prompts, like the way i write my other substack posts. also it feels criminal to use a meme-esque mcu picture as the cover photo for a serious-er poem, no?

source

it hung there,  
between us, like a word  
never spoken, like the sigh  
that never had the chance  
to breathe itself into air.  
i waited—  
patient, hopeful,  
as if silence could break itself  
if i gave it enough time.  
  
but time passed, didn’t it?  
seasons shifted, faces grew older,  
and still,  
no apology found its way  
to my ears.  
  
i learned to fill the gaps  
with reasons—  
maybe they didn’t know,  
maybe they couldn’t find the words  
to shape what was wrong  
into something small enough  
to give me. 
  
i became good at this,  
good at excusing absence,  
turning it into a lesson  
on how to live with the void  
of things left unsaid.  
  
but deep down,  
i knew what it was.  
the weight of it heavy  
in the pit of my chest,  
like stones you carry  
without ever knowing  
when to set them down.  
  
i didn’t ask for much,  
just a whisper,  
a brief pause  
in the hum of your life  
to say: i hurt you
and i'm sorry.   
to say what never  
broke the surface of 
a conversation—  
a few words,  
a hand reaching across the table,  
but there was
none of that.  
  
instead, i taught yourself  
to live in the absence,  
to carry the silence  
as if it were an old friend,  
to fold the empty space  
into origami shapes of forgiveness,  
even though the paper  
was never given to me.  
  
i think of it sometimes—  
the apology i never got.  
how it still lingers  
like a shadow cast by things  
that should have been.  
  
but i don’t wait anymore.  
healing doesn’t 
come in the form  
of words you never hear, and 
closure is a 
door you have to close yourself.  
  
so i stand,  
hands on the latch,  
and with a quiet breath  
i step forward,  
knowing that sometimes,  
the hardest apology  
to live without  
is the one  
i'll never get.

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