Lost in Translation

I stand there,

beside her,

but not truly there—

caught in the strange gravity between presence and absence.

In these tragic moments, when words should matter most, I find myself retreating, silently. My voice, though formed with care, meets no resonance. It's as if the air between us thickens into something impenetrable. I crack a joke—lighthearted, perhaps too light for the weight of the moment.

It drifts away,

unnoticed,

and I am left wondering,

am I fading too?

 

What’s worse than being unheard?

It’s not even the absence of words but the hollow feeling that swells in the silence afterward, like standing in a room where the walls are slowly closing in. The mind stumbles, thoughts tripping over themselves as they scramble to reach the surface. Each idea dissolves into the air before it can take form—vanishing like smoke against the cold, hard surface of her grief, her preoccupation.

Yet still,

I stand there,

trying.

Failing.

 

There's a gap between us, and though I feel it keenly, I don’t know how to bridge it. In my mind, the thoughts tumble and tangle, like waves crashing against the rocks, only to retreat again into the depths. I’ve learned so much, haven’t I? Experiences shaping me, expanding me, offering new perspectives, and yet, here—right now—I’m no more than a shadow of myself, circling the same old truths that feel inadequate in her presence.

My understanding,

though vast,

seems useless.

 

Responsibilities weigh me down like stones in my pocket.

The need to be strong,

to carry the burdens of life,

to be the support—

I feel it pressing on me, and yet I long to cast it all aside, to let the heaviness slip away, just for a moment. But even in my longing, I am met with that same silence. It’s dark, oppressive, yet not aggressive—just an endless void that fans the embers of my frustration.

 

I turn to screens,

to keyboards—

typing out what I cannot seem to say aloud.

There, I find some release, some space to let the words flow, though even then, they come out jagged, incomplete. My conversations become fragmented, misunderstood, stripped of their meaning. I wear pseudonyms like masks, revealing parts of myself to strangers that I can’t seem to share with the person beside me. In those digital spaces, I am raw, but still distant.

 

You don’t need to hear my voice; you need to feel me. But how can I make you feel something I can’t even grasp? I apologize for my shortcomings, for my failures to understand, but the apologies get caught in that same silence, ensnared in the web of things unsaid. I don’t force the connection, but neither do I beg for it.

I simply exist, hoping that one day, maybe, the silence will crack, and

we’ll both be laid bare—

hearts open,

vulnerable,

but finally understood.

 

But for now, the silence remains. 

There’s an inevitability to it, isn’t there? The logical mind would tell me that not every silence can be filled, that sometimes standing beside someone is enough. But the heart, it demands more. And yet, no matter how much I try to deny it, reality pulls me back. I pick up the pen. It is here, in these words, that I find my solace.

It’s here I wield something I can control,

something that listens,

that responds.

The paper doesn’t silence me.

It absorbs me.

 

And so, I write. My thoughts, ideas—everything I could not say in those tragic moments,

I declare here,

hoping that somehow,

in the ink and the lines,

I’ll find the understanding that eluded me

in the space between us.