CLOAK OF SILENCE – WINTRYPOET

CLOAK OF SILENCE

The old Victorian house still stands like a forgotten monument, its paint peeling like sunburnt skin. Generations of the Dabajeh family had called it home, each leaving their silent mark in the creaks of the floorboards and the faded patterns of its wall.

Tonight, however, a different sort of melancholy drama was unfolding. The Love who held the family together had passed on, and the house now feels empty, silent, and cold. The silence in the house was a suffocating blanket, heavy and unrelenting. It wasn’t the usual quiet of a space, but a vast, echoing emptiness that followed my mother’s absence. It had been three years, yet the wound felt as raw as the day it was inflicted. Like a freshly carved scar on my soul, the pain throbbed, a persistent reminder of what I had lost. People who say time heals all wounds are all fools. Time hadn’t healed anything. It had just layered the new over the old. The joy I once held was buried deep; the vibrant colors of my life have muted under shades of gray. The scar in my heart remains as painful as that January morning. Pain continues to cling to me, a constant reminder of the space she used to occupy, the vibrant energy that now echoes only in the hollow chambers of my memory. When I sometimes find myself wandering through the room where she was lying sick, I close my eyes, and for a fleeting moment, the weight seems to lift. I see her there, just as I always have in the sanctuary of my mind, beside me. The air around us shimmers, not with the harsh glare of reality, but with a soft, dreamlike luminescence. It’s the light of shared secrets and unspoken understandings. I can almost hear her worried voice crying, “Dress warm, it’s cold outside.” I can almost feel the warmth emanating from her, a comforting heat that seeps into the cold corners of my heart.

We would sit for hours in that living room, sometimes talking, sometimes simply enjoying the quiet companionship. She had always considered me a bit of an enigma, a recluse who preferred the company of old books and the rustling of leaves to human interaction. Still, she would wrap me in a blanket woven from the threads of dreams and whispered promises, she was my haven. I would allow myself to be vulnerable in ways I could never be elsewhere. The world outside, with its relentless demands and its jarring chaos, simply fades away. It’s as though a thick veil descends, muffling the noise and allowing only the gentle hum of our connection to penetrate. Here, the traffic is silenced, the news reports vanish, and the pressures of the day cease to matter. It’s just us, two souls huddled together against the vastness of existence, finding solace in each other’s presence.

I would peel back the layers of self-preservation and reveal the fears that haunted my waking hours. I would speak of the anxieties that clawed at the edges of my mind, the doubts that whispered insidious lies about my writing. And she, with her infinite grace and her boundless empathy, would listen. She wouldn’t offer platitudes or dismiss my worries. Instead, she would embrace them, wrapping them in her laughter, a sound as bright and as warm as the summer sun. Her laughter was a balm, transforming the jagged edges of my anxieties into something beautiful, something whole. I’d share my hopes, the delicate seedlings of ambition and desire that I nurtured in the quiet hours. She would tend to them with a careful hand, offering encouragement and unwavering belief in my potential. She saw possibilities in me that I was often blind to. She was my mirror, reflecting a vision of the person I could be, the person I was meant to be. She made me feel invincible, capable of conquering any obstacle, as long as I had her by my side. I would see her in the half-light, her gentle smile, the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she laughed. These fleeting visions were fleeting comforts, quickly replaced by the stark reality that she was gone. That’s the hardest part, the cruel reality that the world keeps pushing back into my awareness: She isn’t. Not anymore. One day, the blanket of dreams was ripped away. One day, the whispered promises went silent. One day, she was simply… gone.

I tried to fill the void, burying myself in work and surrounding myself with friends. But the laughter felt hollow, the conversations superficial. Beneath it all, there was this constant ache, a missing piece that no amount of distraction could replace. I found myself searching for her in the faces of strangers, listening for her voice in the wind, hoping for a sign, a whisper, anything to bridge the chasm that had formed between us. The other day, I found an old photo album. As I flipped through the pages, I saw her holding me as a kid, her eyes full of tender love. I remembered the warmth of her laughter, the comfort of her embrace. A single tear rolled down my face, not from sadness alone, but also from a longing so profound it felt like it could consume me.

I still close my eyes, seeking refuge in the sanctuary of my imagination. But the light is dimmer now, the blanket of dreams threadbare. The whispered promises feel like taunts, reminding me of what I’ve lost. And the silence is louder, a constant reminder that she’s not here, that she’ll never be here again, except in this phantom world, this echo chamber of my heart. The weight returns, heavier than ever. It is the weight of grief, the weight of loss, and the weight of a love that will never fade. And in that weight, I exist. I try to breathe. I try to remember her laughter, its transformative power, and hope that one day, I can find a way to stitch together the shattered pieces of my own life into something beautiful, into something whole. Though, in truth, the beautiful whole we shared feels like a distant memory now. One I desperately hope to keep alive, even within this heavy cloak of silence. The weight remains, and so does she, forever etched into the very core of me. The orange glow of the setting sun paints the sky with a deceptive warmth. I stand there, tangled up in thoughts. “Time,” I whispered, “is just a relentless tide. It carries you and gradually lessens the ache, but it doesn’t repair the broken things.”