She still remembered the sound of his laughter — quiet, low, almost hidden, but warm enough to fill the small space between them. It wasn’t what he said that she remembered most, but how he existed in the moment: steady, calm, as if nothing in the world could rush him.
He never tried to impress her, and maybe that’s why she noticed him. His calm steadied something inside her, a kind of peace she didn’t realize she’d been missing. His presence had been like the soft click of a lock opening. No noise, no drama, just the sudden realization that a door inside her had always been waiting.
There was a calm I met between storms,
a voice that steadied the trembling glass of my days.
They were together for a time — not in love, not quite friends, something in between, where glances lasted a second too long and conversations carried a quiet pulse underneath. In the car rides, he talked more than she did. He spoke of simple things, and she listened, storing every tone, every easy turn of phrase, as if they were rare artifacts. She wasn’t in love with him, not the way people write songs about. What she felt was gentler — an affection that respected its own limits.
When he smiled, the noise in her mind softened. When he fell silent, she could still feel the echo of his voice, humming beneath her ribs. She told herself it was just admiration. Respect. The quiet bond of people who understand each other without explanation. But admiration has a way of deepening in the dark, where logic can’t police the heart.
No vows were written, no touch exchanged,
yet something sacred passed between silences.
After the journey ended, life resumed its shape. He became distant again — messages shorter, replies slower, until the space between them stretched into something she could no longer cross. He said he was busy. She told herself she understood.
And she did.
But still, she missed him — or rather, she missed the version of herself that existed when he was near: calm, alive, seen.
Sometimes she’d catch herself thinking of the way he looked at her — not intensely, just long enough. That was his gift: he never made promises, yet somehow his presence lingered like one. She smiled at the memory of his eyes — the calm that lived there, the warmth that asked for nothing. She missed that the most: the simplicity of being around someone who made the world feel less heavy.
Some lights pass without promise,
too far to touch, too near to forget.
At night, when the world slowed down, she’d think of the small details — his voice in the car, his unguarded laugh, the way he tilted his head when listening. Each detail folded itself into memory, quiet and exact.
I do not chase it.
I let it hum beneath my ribs,
like a secret chord Heaven once allowed me to hear.
Time did what it always does — it softened the ache but never erased it. People changed, routines thickened, messages stopped altogether. Yet she carried him still — not as pain, but as proof that something once shimmered in the middle of her ordinary days.
He had reminded her that she could still feel deeply, still find beauty in another human being without needing to possess it.
Not every warmth is meant for the hand;
some are meant for the soul to remember.
When she thought of him now, it wasn’t with sadness. It was with quiet gratitude — the kind that fills the chest, not with longing, but with peace.
The way dusk keeps the last blush of day,
not as hope, but as proof that light once lingered.
She had written letters she never sent — pages that began with Dear you and ended with thank you for existing in my story. She kept them tucked between the pages of her journal, folded like fragile wings.
Sometimes, when the night felt kind, she’d read them again — not to reopen the past, but to honor the calm it once gave her.
The sky forgets its stars by morning,
but the sea remembers their reflection.
The ones that never belonged to the night,
yet still found their way into my sky.
Now, she no longer needed his reply. His silence had become its own kind of answer — gentle, inevitable. And in that silence, she learned to breathe again.
She lived her days, loved her life, carried her tenderness forward.
And every once in a while, when the light hit just right, she could still feel him — not as a wound, but as warmth.
Now the light rests where memory sleeps,
folded between thought and prayer.
Tonight, she let herself breathe.
Not to remember, but to simply exist in the quiet truth that some connections don’t fade — they transform.
They live on as light that no distance can take away.
You were a chapter, not the whole story.
Fragment 2 of many to come | @darkjasm | #QuietStarSeries | Fictional
The DarkJasmine 