At The Edge of Almost

 The night had grown impossibly quiet.

Not the kind of quiet that calms you  but the kind that exposes everything you’ve been avoiding.

She stood near the edge of the room, fingers loosely wrapped around her own wrist, as if holding herself back. The dim light softened her features, but nothing could soften the storm behind her eyes.

He didn’t touch her.

That was the problem.

He simply stood there - steady, patient - giving her space to either step away or step closer.

And she was tired of stepping away.

“You don’t understand what this does to me,” she said finally, her voice lower than usual.

He didn’t interrupt.

She let out a breath - shaky, honest.

“I keep telling myself we’re just… us. That word sounds so clean.” A faint, almost bitter smile touched her lips. “But nothing about this feels clean.”

She moved toward him slowly.

There was something raw about her in that moment - not in appearance alone, but in presence. The way her shoulders relaxed when she stopped pretending. The way her gaze no longer hid behind politeness.

“You think I don’t feel it?” she whispered. “Every time you look at me like that… like I’m not invisible.”

Her hands trembled slightly - not from fear, but from release. Years of restraint pressing against a fragile edge.

“I go home and tell myself it’s just imagination,” she continued. “That it’s just loneliness. That it’s nothing.”

She stepped even closer now, close enough to feel his warmth without touching him.

“But it’s not nothing.”

Her eyes lifted to his, fully open now - no masks.

“It scares me,” she confessed. “Because when I’m with you…. I don’t feel trapped. I feel wanted. I feel… seen.”

Her voice cracked softly on the last word.

He still hadn’t moved.

That steadiness undid her more than any touch could have.

“There are nights,” she admitted, almost breathless now, “when I lie awake and imagine what it would be like if I had chosen differently. If life had turned one inch another way.”

Her fingers finally reached for him - hesitant at first - then firmer.

“I don’t want to be reckless,” she said. “I don’t want to destroy things. But pretending I don’t feel this is destroying me in another way.”

There it was.

Not lust alone. Not impulse.

Conflict.

Desire woven with guilt.

Longing tangled with loyalty.

Love - or something dangerously close to it- rising despite every boundary she tried to build.

“I care about you,” she said softly. “More than I should. More than I planned to.”

Her forehead rested lightly against his chest - not surrender in weakness, but surrender in honesty.

And in that moment, it wasn’t about skin.

It was about the unbearable relief of finally speaking what had been burning silently for years.

When the words finally left her lips, the room did not change.

But everything inside it did.

Her forehead rested against his chest, and for a moment, neither of them moved. The air felt suspended like the world itself was holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

He could feel her heartbeat.

Fast.

Unsteady.

Honest.

The confession had cost her something. You could see it in the way her fingers lightly gripped his shirt -not possessive, not demanding - just anchoring herself to the truth she had finally spoken.

Silence filled the space between them.

Not awkward.

Not empty.

But thick with everything that didn’t need words.

She pulled back slightly, just enough to look at him. There was no seduction in her eyes now. No playfulness. Only vulnerability laid bare.

And that vulnerability was more intimate than any touch.

“Say something,” she whispered.

But he didn’t rush.

Because he understood that this silence was sacred. It was the thin line between fantasy and reality. Between longing and consequence.

His hand slowly rose to her face - not to claim her, but to steady her. His thumb brushed gently against her cheek, grounding her trembling breath.

He didn’t kiss her.

He didn’t pull her closer.

Instead, he held her gaze.

And in that gaze was something deeper than hunger.

It was care.

The kind that makes desire more dangerous.

The silence stretched longer but it no longer felt heavy. It felt deliberate. Thoughtful. Like two people standing at the edge of something vast and irreversible.

She searched his eyes, trying to read his decision.

Was he going to turn this into fire?

Or into restraint?

Her chest rose and fell slowly now. The storm inside her had quieted - not because the feelings disappeared, but because they had been acknowledged.

Sometimes the loudest intimacy is the one where nothing happens.

Just two people standing close enough to feel each other’s warmth…

And far enough to know the cost of crossing that last inch.

The silence didn’t break them.

It bound them.

The silence between them had stretched long enough to feel like a decision.

Her confession still hung in the air - fragile, irreversible.

He studied her face as if memorizing it - the way her lips parted slightly when she was nervous, the faint tremble she tried to suppress, the quiet strength beneath her softness.

“You’re not alone in this,” he said finally.

His voice was low. Steady. Not impulsive.

Her breath caught.

That was all it took.

Something shifted - not dramatically, not recklessly - but undeniably.

His hand that had been resting lightly against her cheek didn’t fall away this time. It slid slowly along the curve of her jaw, deliberate, giving her every second to pull back.

She didn’t.

Instead, her eyes fluttered shut - not in surrender to him, but in surrender to herself.

“I shouldn’t,” she whispered.

“I know.”

But neither of them stepped away.

His fingers traced down the side of her neck - slowly, reverently - as if he understood that this was not about urgency. It was about years of restraint dissolving inch by inch.

Her hands, which had been gripping his shirt, loosened - then tightened again, pulling him closer by the smallest fraction.

That fraction was everything.

The space between their lips narrowed until it was nothing but shared breath.

He paused.

One last chance.

One last boundary.

She answered the unspoken question by tilting her face upward.

And when their lips finally met, it wasn’t wild.

It wasn’t rushed.

It was deep.

Intentional.

A kiss that carried history, longing, guilt, tenderness - all at once.

Her fingers slid upward, threading into his hair, holding him there as if afraid he might disappear. Her body softened fully against his - no tension left, no pretending left.

This wasn’t conquest.

This was choosing.

Choosing, even if only for a moment.

When they parted, her forehead rested against his again, both of them breathing heavier now - not from chaos, but from the weight of what they had just allowed.

“We crossed something,” she murmured.

“Yes.”

But neither of them regretted it.

Because sometimes one step further isn’t about losing control.

It’s about finally admitting the truth your body has known all along.

The kiss changed everything.

It started slow - deliberate - but something beneath it had been waiting too long.

When she pulled him closer this time, there was no hesitation left in her hands. The careful distance they had guarded for years collapsed into urgency. Her fingers gripped him as if afraid the moment might vanish if she loosened her hold.

He felt the shift.

This was no longer quiet confession.

This was hunger meeting permission.

Her breathing grew uneven, and the softness in her earlier voice dissolved into something rawer. Not reckless but stripped of politeness, stripped of pretense.

“You said we shouldn’t,” he murmured against her temple.

“I know,” she replied - but her body answered differently.

She pressed closer, closing every remaining inch between them. The tension that had once lived in glances and late-night conversations now moved through touch, through proximity, through the way she no longer stepped back.

Years of “what if” condensed into one charged moment.

He lifted her slightly, instinctively, and she held onto him tighter - not fragile, not unsure - but fully present. The careful composure she carried in daylight was gone. What remained was the woman who had been holding herself together for too long.

There was no room now for speeches about consequences.

Only heat. Only breath. Only the undeniable pull of finally letting go.

But even in that near loss of control, something human remained between them -awareness.

Not of the world outside.

But of each other.

This wasn’t careless chaos.

It was two people standing at the edge of something irreversible, choosing intensity over silence - even if only for that night.

And in that moment, restraint didn’t disappear.

It surrendered.

#

The intensity had climbed too high.

Her hands were still gripping him, her breath uneven, her body pressed close - close enough that thought had begun dissolving into instinct.

He felt it.

That dangerous point where longing becomes action.

Her lips found his again - not tentative now, not questioning - but certain. Years of restraint were breaking apart in the space between heartbeats.

He pulled her closer instinctively.

And that was the moment.

That single, irreversible moment.

She froze.

Not physically - but internally.

A flicker passed through her eyes when she opened them - something fragile breaking through the haze of desire.

Reality.

Not the world outside.

But the weight of tomorrow.

Her fingers slowly loosened their hold.

He felt the shift instantly.

“What happened?” he whispered, still close, still breathing her in.

She shook her head softly, stepping back just enough to create air between them. That small distance felt enormous now.

“I can’t,” she said - not coldly, not dramatically - but honestly.

Her chest rose and fell as she tried to steady herself.

“I wanted to,” she admitted. “God, I wanted to.”

That confession was heavier than anything physical.

He reached for her again - not to pull her back - but to hold her hands instead. Grounding her. Grounding himself.

“We’re not just playing with feelings,” she continued, her voice trembling now. “This doesn’t end in a moment. It ends in consequences.”

The word lingered.

Consequences.

The heat between them hadn’t disappeared. It was still there, pulsing, undeniable. But now it was mixed with something stronger - awareness.

He rested his forehead against hers once more, but differently this time. Not as a prelude.

As a pause.

“You’re stronger than you think,” he said quietly.

She let out a breath that sounded almost like relief.

“No,” she whispered. “I’m just scared of losing everything.”

Silence returned - but it wasn’t tense anymore.

It was protective.

They stood there, inches apart, knowing they had almost crossed into something that would change the shape of their lives.

And for the first time that night, the choice felt intentional.

Not suppressed.

Chosen.

She stepped back fully now, smoothing her hair as if reassembling herself.

The desire hadn’t vanished.

It had been acknowledged.

And then… contained.

Sometimes the most powerful loss of control is the one you stop just before it becomes real.

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© Abhishek Pathak 

When the Goddess Awoke

The first dawn of Navratri spilled across the town like liquid gold. Streets hummed with devotion, houses gleamed with fresh rangolis, and the air itself seemed perfumed with faith. But inside a small, half-lit room, Aarti sat still, her silence louder than the drums outside.

Life had carved wounds on her spirit. Dreams she once held with both hands had slipped away like sand; people she trusted had left her carrying their shadows; and every mirror she faced whispered back her failures. She lived for her daughter, Priya, but deep inside, she was breaking in places no one could see.

That morning, Priya came running with innocent excitement, her small fingers smudged with crayons. She held out a drawing — Maa Durga, bold and radiant.

“Ma, look! My teacher said Durga Maa fights all the bad demons. Can she fight mine too?”

Aarti managed a smile. “Yes, beta… Maa can fight anyone’s demons.”

But as soon as Priya skipped away, her smile dissolved. The truth echoed inside her — If Maa fights demons, then why can’t I fight mine?

That night, Aarti’s exhausted eyes finally surrendered to sleep. And in her dream, she found herself standing in the heart of a battlefield. The sky burned red, the earth trembled, and from the horizon rose an army of demons. Each one carried a name she knew too well: Fear. Doubt. Loneliness. Betrayal. Poverty.

Her knees weakened. She wanted to hide. But then — a sound. The rolling drumbeat of a damru, the piercing cry of a conch. From the clouds emerged Maa Durga, astride her lion, her ten arms gleaming with weapons of light.

Aarti fell to her knees. “Maa, save me. I am too small for this war.”

Durga’s eyes held both fire and gentleness. Her voice was thunder wrapped in melody:

"Child, I have not come to fight for you. I have come to remind you — I am already within you. Every scar you hide is a mark of your survival. Every fall you endured has sharpened your spirit. I am not only the goddess you bow before — I am the strength you rise with. Lift your head. Take your weapon. The battle is yours, and the victory too."

At her feet, a trident appeared. Aarti’s trembling fingers reached for it — and the moment she held it, something shifted. Her chest rose with a courage she had long forgotten. Her fear melted like ice beneath the sun.

The demons roared, louder than before. They screamed her failures, threw her past in her face. But she no longer shook. With the first strike of faith, Fear dissolved into dust. With a roar of determination, Loneliness collapsed. And one by one, the demons fell, until only silence remained.

When she lifted her gaze, Maa Durga was no longer outside her — she was in her heartbeat, in her breath, in her very being.

Aarti woke before dawn. The town was alive with temple bells, but inside her room, something far greater had awakened. She lit the diya before Durga’s idol, her hands steady, her eyes clear.

But this time, her prayer was different:

"Maa, never let me forget — you are not just the goddess I worship. You are the fire in my courage, the shield in my endurance, the voice that tells me to rise again. You are me."

That Navratri, Aarti didn’t just observe a festival. She lived it. And with every day that passed, she carried a truth brighter than any flame:

Navratri is not about finding the goddess in temples. It is about realizing — she has always lived within us, waiting to be awakened.

Untouched

I could never reduce you to beauty, charm, or grace—because you are not a surface to be admired, you are a depth to be felt.

Your truth lives in your rawness, in the purity that needs no decoration, in the honesty that makes silence speak louder than words.

Your openness is not just a trait, it is your spirit—vast, unconfined, fearless, carrying the fragrance of freedom.

Your uniqueness is not in how the world sees you, but in how you remain yourself when no one is watching.

You are not remembered in colors and shapes, but in the way your essence lingers—like the stillness of dawn, like the endless sky, like a river that carries everything yet stays pure.

You are not a story to be written, you are a presence to be felt. And perhaps that is your greatest beauty—when words fall short, you remain, untouched and unforgettable.

सबसे सुंदर रिश्तें

रिश्ते किताबों की तरह नहीं होते जिन्हें एक बार पढ़ लिया और बंद कर दिया। रिश्ते तो रोज़ पढ़े जाते हैं — हर भाव, हर खामोशी, हर नज़र और हर थकावट में। और जो रिश्ते वक़्त की कसौटी पर खरे उतरते हैं, वो कभी बड़ी बातों पर नहीं टिकते… वो तो छोटी-छोटी चीज़ों में पलते हैं — एक-दूसरे के लिए रखा गया पानी का गिलास, बिना कहे समझ लेना कि आज बात नहीं करनी है, सिर्फ़ बैठकर साथ चाय पीना और चुप रहना।

पर इन रिश्तों की नींव जिन दो स्तंभों पर टिकी होती है, वो हैं सहनशीलता और सेवा।

सहनशीलता — जो अक्सर हमें कमजोर समझ ली जाती है, असल में किसी रिश्ते की सबसे मजबूत डोर होती है। जब आप किसी की कमज़ोरी को देखकर भागते नहीं, बल्कि उसे और कसकर थाम लेते हैं, वही सहनशीलता है। जब आप जानते हैं कि सामने वाला सही नहीं है, फिर भी उसे उस वक़्त सहारा दे देते हैं, क्योंकि आप उस इंसान को हारते हुए नहीं देख सकते — वही सच्चा प्रेम है।

रिश्तों में कई बार ऐसा समय आता है जब शब्द बेअसर हो जाते हैं। एक-दूसरे की थकान, चिड़चिड़ापन, और मन की उलझनों को न तो समझाना आसान होता है और न ही बयान करना। ऐसे वक़्त में सहनशीलता ही होती है जो उस खामोशी को भी सुन लेती है। ये वो प्रेम है जो लड़ाई के बाद भी रसोई में उसका पसंदीदा खाना रख देता है, जो कहता नहीं, पर हर बार इंतज़ार करता है कि वह ठीक होकर लौटे।

और फिर है सेवा — जो शायद इस भागदौड़ भरी दुनिया में सबसे कम समझी जाने वाली भाषा है। सेवा का मतलब सिर्फ़ किसी की मदद करना नहीं होता — सेवा का मतलब है, प्रेमपूर्वक किसी की ज़िम्मेदारी को महसूस करना। अपने स्वार्थों से ऊपर उठकर किसी के लिए जीना, बिना किसी गिनती के। जब आप उसके लिए वो करते हैं जो वो खुद भी अपने लिए नहीं कर पा रहा, जब आप उसकी उलझनों को बिना बताए सुलझा देते हैं — वो सेवा है।

सेवा प्रेम की वो चुप पराकाष्ठा है, जो कहती नहीं कि "मैं हूँ", लेकिन हर वक़्त दिखती है। वो रोज़ सुबह ऑफिस जाते वक़्त उसके टिफिन में रखा हुआ छोटा सा 'Have a good day' का नोट है। वो है — जब आप खुद थके हों, पर उसके दर्द को पहले राहत दो। ये सेवा कोई अहसान नहीं — ये वो प्रेम है जिसमें “तुम” का सुख, “मैं” की थकान से ऊपर होता है।

सच्चे रिश्ते कभी बराबरी नहीं माँगते। वहाँ कोई मोल-भाव नहीं होता। वहाँ कोई हिसाब नहीं होता कि "मैंने इतना किया, तुमने क्या किया।" क्योंकि वहाँ प्रेम, व्यापार नहीं — एक यात्रा होती है, जो हम साथ तय करते हैं। एक ऐसा सफ़र जहाँ हम एक-दूसरे की कमज़ोरियों को ढाँकते हैं, अच्छाइयों को थामते हैं, और जब कभी कोई बिखरने लगे — तो खुद को थोड़ा और जोड़ते हैं ताकि वो सहेजा जा सके।

ऐसे रिश्तों में शब्द गौण हो जाते हैं और भावनाएँ बोलने लगती हैं। वहाँ "मैं सही हूँ, तुम गलत" नहीं होता — वहाँ सिर्फ़ ये होता है कि "तुम मेरे हो, चाहे जैसे भी हो।" और शायद इसी वजह से ये रिश्ते वक़्त के साथ पुराने नहीं होते — वो उम्र की रेखाओं में और भी गहराते जाते हैं।

क्योंकि अंत में, प्रेम ना तो शोर करता है, ना ही मंच माँगता है।

प्रेम तो वहाँ होता है — जहाँ आप थके हुए लौटें और कोई चुपचाप आपके सिर पर हाथ फेर दे।

जहाँ गलती होने पर डाँट नहीं, बल्कि आँखों में नमी मिले।

जहाँ आपकी खामोशियाँ किसी को परेशान कर दें, सिर्फ़ इसलिए कि वो आपकी खुशी को जीता है।

ऐसे रिश्तों को ना परिभाषा चाहिए, ना कोई प्रमाण।

उन्हें सिर्फ़ दो चीज़ें चाहिए — सहनशीलता का धैर्य और सेवा की निःशब्द भावना।

बाकी सब तो प्रेम खुद सिखा देता है…

Real Love : The Kind That Stays When The Sparks Fade.

 Sometimes, if we’re honest with ourselves, we realize that what we’re truly in love with is not always the person — it’s the feeling. The magic. The dream. The way our heart flutters when they text, the way our loneliness temporarily disappears in their presence, the way we imagine they’ll complete the empty corners of our lives. We fall in love with the idea of being in love — with being chosen, understood, seen. And in that rush of emotion, we begin to project — building castles from conversations, weaving futures from glances, shaping someone into the perfect character for a story we’ve already written in our minds.

But people are not stories. They are not characters created for our comfort. They are complex, ever-changing, deeply human — full of contradictions, insecurities, wounds we don’t understand. And so, when the illusion wears thin — when the fairytale falters and the reality of who they are begins to emerge — we sometimes feel disillusioned, even disappointed. Not because they did something wrong, but because they stopped matching the version we created of them. And that’s when we realize: maybe it wasn’t them we were in love with. Maybe it was the feeling. Maybe it was the love itself.

Real love — the kind that stays when the sparks fade — is less about being intoxicated and more about choosing someone again and again, even on the ordinary days. It’s seeing someone’s worst and still staying kind. It’s loving the person, not just the poetry they once made us feel. So yes, many times we love love more than the people. Because love is beautiful, flawless, limitless in our minds — but people, people require patience. They demand effort. They come with baggage. They change. And the deepest act of love is to let go of the fantasy, and choose them still — not for how they make us feel, but for who they truly are.

And He Still Choose Her

He wasn’t the kind of man who fell for a face.

Arav was the type who fell for silences — the kind people carry inside them, hidden behind practiced smiles. He observed more than he spoke, cherished things most overlooked — the way rainwater settled on windows, the way books exhaled memory when opened, the way someone paused before saying something that mattered.

And then came Meher.

She arrived into his life like a misplaced line in a poem — unfamiliar, unpredictable, unforgettable. She didn’t walk in; she collided with his world. Loud where he was quiet, restless where he was composed. But somewhere beneath her painted laughter and wine-colored lips, there was a grief — unspoken, unhealed, unclaimed.

They met by chance, or perhaps by design — fate never leaves signatures.

A coffee spilled, a shared table, a disagreement over a line in Sylvia Plath.

And then, without planning, without permission, their conversations stretched — from casual to confessional, from curiosity to comfort.

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Weeks passed. Their lives grew into each other like ivy on old walls — effortlessly, quietly.

But love, real love, doesn’t bloom only in light.

One night, with her eyes a shade darker than usual, Meher whispered a truth she'd rehearsed a hundred times but never dared to say out loud.

 “I’ve been with someone before... many times. It wasn't simple. I broke after that. I stopped believing in love, in myself.”

There was no drama in her voice, only a careful tremor, like a wound learning how to breathe in open air.

She looked at him not for forgiveness, but for the certainty of rejection.

She had seen decency disappear when her truth was spoken.

But Arav? He didn’t blink.

He didn’t ask why. He didn’t turn away.

He reached for her hand — not to hold it, but to anchor her.

“Your past isn’t a debt. It’s a journey. And I don’t need to know where you’ve been to walk with you from here.”

That night, something sacred happened. Not sex. Not romance. But acceptance — the rare kind that doesn’t try to cleanse or claim, but simply stays.

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They built a relationship not on fantasies, but on small, deliberate acts of choosing one another.

She still had nights when her demons came back.

He learned to recognize the silence in her texts.

She sometimes recoiled from intimacy.

He held space without questions.

He didn’t fall in love with a perfect woman.

He fell in love with a real one — one who had suffered, scarred, survived, and still somehow carried the warmth of a monsoon afternoon.

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Then, suddenly — she left.

No confrontation. No betrayal in the conventional sense. Just a single message:

 “Please don’t hate me. I never knew how to be loved this gently, and I’m afraid I’ll ruin it.”

And she was gone. Like the last page of a book torn out.

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Friends said he was a fool. That he was "too good," that she had "used him," that love shouldn’t be blind.

But Arav only smiled — that quiet, devastating smile of someone who loved without regret.

“You don’t regret giving someone light. Even if they run from it.”

He still kept her favorite poetry book in his shelf — untouched, but not unloved.

He never hated her. He couldn’t.

Because he had loved her with the kind of love that doesn’t keep score. That doesn’t demand to be remembered. That doesn’t die just because it wasn’t returned.

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In the quiet truth of it all..

She had given him a wound, yes — but he had given her something rarer: a love so gentle, so forgiving, so real that even her leaving couldn’t erase it.

And in that, he wasn’t the man she left behind. He was the man who loved anyway.

© Abhishek Pathak 

She Called, I Stayed.

She called me one evening—without warning, without pretext—just her breath on the line, trembling like a candle in the wind. And I answered, not with words, but with presence. Some calls you don't ignore. Some voices carry the weight of unshed tears, and hers did.

“I just needed someone to talk to,” she whispered, barely holding herself together. And so, I became her someone.

She unraveled slowly—thread by thread—telling me about him, about how he played with her hope, dangled the idea of love just close enough to keep her craving, but never real enough to hold. He never promised her a forever, only borrowed moments—convenient silences, half-hearted affection, temporary warmth.

And while she poured herself out, I listened.

Not because I was supposed to. But because I wanted to.

Because when someone’s soul is crumbling, you don’t ask questions. You don’t rush healing. You just sit with their pain and hold space for their brokenness.

I gave her my time. My stillness. My peace.

I paused my world to steady hers.

Even when my own mind was a maze of unanswered questions. Even when I had stories inside me aching to be heard—about my quiet griefs, my untold anxieties, the nights I couldn't sleep, the mornings I didn’t want to wake up. I never shared those. I made space for her storms and folded my own away like unfinished letters no one would ever read.

I sent her poetry when she felt unlovable, sent her voice notes when silence was too loud, sent her bits of light when she couldn’t find her own.

Not once did I ask her to choose me instead.

I simply chose her, every time.

Then, one day, the calls stopped.

No fights. No farewells. Just absence—quiet and cruel. Like I’d been a waiting room, and her turn for happiness had finally arrived somewhere else.

She ghosted not just my inbox, but the parts of me she once occupied with laughter and pain. And I? I didn’t beg. I didn’t text.

I just… let her go. As gently as I had held her.

Because love, to me, wasn’t about claiming or confessing. It was about showing up—when it was inconvenient, when it was one-sided, when it hurt.

I was never her lover.

Just the pause between her heartbreaks.

But I hope—truly, silently—that someday, when she scrolls through old chats or finds a forgotten photo, she remembers me. The one who never asked for anything but gave her everything he could.

And maybe, just maybe, she’ll wonder why she never asked if I was okay, too.

But by then, I’ll have grown used to being the one who listens… even when no one listens back.

Because that’s who I am.

The one who stays. Even when everyone else leaves.

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© Abhishek Pathak 

The Stranger I Knew

It was a city of echoes—old walls, older stories, and people too busy to listen. But Vihaan listened. To rustling leaves, to forgotten benches, to songs the wind carried. He was a writer, not by profession but by heart. Every evening, he wandered to the riverbank, hoping the silence would whisper him a story.

That’s when he saw her.

She sat on a moss-covered bench, sketching something in a little brown diary. Her hair was tied loose, like her thoughts, and a red thread bracelet hung from her wrist. A stranger, but familiar. The kind of familiar you don’t understand—you just feel.

He passed her without a word that day. But returned the next. And the next.

Until one day, she looked up and said, 

“You come here often, don’t you?”

“I do,” he replied. “And you?”

“Only when I’m lost,” she smiled. “But maybe I’ve been found now.”

That was the beginning.

They met every evening, sharing pieces of their past like puzzle fragments. She told him about her love for sketching people she never knew. He spoke of dreams that kept him awake more than his reality ever could. They never exchanged last names. Never asked too much. Just enough to fall—not suddenly, but like a feather drifts before it lands.

Vihaan had never believed in destiny. Until her.

Then one day, she didn’t show up.

He waited. One day. Two. A week.

Nothing.

He asked around. No one had seen a girl like her. Not the vendors. Not the tea stall man who always smiled at her. No sketches left behind. No thread bracelet. Just silence.

Months passed. He wrote about her—page after page. The stranger who painted his soul.

One day, while traveling to a nearby town for a literary event, Vihaan visited an old bookshop. The owner, an old man with trembling fingers, handed him a book from a shelf in the back.

“You might like this one,” he said. “It was written by my daughter. She passed a year ago. She used to sit by the river in your city, drawing faces and writing stories about strangers.”

Vihaan opened the book. His own name stared back at him in the first line of a story titled:

“The Boy Who Listened to the Wind.”

His heart froze.

There, on the dedication page, it read:

"To the one I met only in passing, but loved like I’d known forever."

He realized then—he had been her muse, her story. And she… she had always been more than just a stranger.

Hope

Hope is gentle, like the softest touch of the wind on your face, a whisper that dances in the corners of your heart. It is the quiet promise of a new dawn, breaking through the darkest night, casting its golden warmth on the coldest of fears. Hope is a song that hums in the silence, a lullaby sung by the universe, cradling your soul when the world feels too heavy to bear. It is the breath that fills your lungs after you've been suffocating in despair, the steady hand that pulls you from the abyss, one fragile step at a time.

But hope is also a knife—sharp, glinting with the intensity of truth, cutting through the layers of self-deceit we wrap around our hearts. It is the blade that pierces the quiet comfort of our complacency, ripping through the safety of illusions we’ve so carefully built. Hope does not allow us to hide from what we must become. It is the searing heat of realization, the sting of awakening, and the painful yet necessary wound of growth. It cuts deeply, not to hurt, but to heal, carving away the parts of us that are broken and rebuilding something more beautiful, something stronger in their place.

Hope is not soft and safe. It is a force that burns and breaks, that demands everything from us. But in that fire, we find ourselves reborn—transformed, a more vivid, more passionate version of the person we were before. Hope, in all its beauty and brutality, teaches us that to reach for the stars, we must be willing to climb the jagged rocks beneath us. It is a delicate dance of tenderness and strength, of love and loss, of light and dark. Hope is the blade that slices open your heart, and in its wake, it leaves you whole again, but in a way you never imagined.

Hope is both the softest breath and the sharpest edge, the promise of something beautiful, and the price we must pay to get there. It is the quiet strength to endure, and the fierce courage to become.

Lost Echoes of Love – Part 3: The Lives We Built, The Love We Left

Ansh had built a life far from the wreckage of his past. Journalism had become his anchor, his escape, his purpose. He chased breaking news across cities, uncovered stories buried in silence, and brought voices to pages that the world needed to hear. Yet, in the quiet moments between deadlines and interviews, in the hush of a late-night newsroom or the solitude of a hotel room in an unfamiliar city, she still lived somewhere in his thoughts.

Akshita. The woman who had once spoken about a future with him, who had dreamed out loud about a life they could have built together. The woman who had once whispered, “My father will be impressed by you,” only to disappear into the fog of her own unspoken reasons.

She had moved on, or at least, she had learned how to. A medical professional now, her world revolved around saving lives, mending broken bodies. But could she mend the broken pieces she had left behind?

Their conversations had grown sparse, but not absent. They spoke in measured tones, two people who once knew each other’s hearts now reduced to exchanging small glimpses of their present lives. She spoke of long hospital shifts, the exhaustion of caring for patients who hovered between life and death, the weight of responsibility on her shoulders. He spoke of newsroom chaos, of truth and deception, of the power and burden of words.

And yet, beneath it all, there was always something missing. Something unsaid.

The Truth That Never Came

Ansh had spent years replaying their past, searching for the moment she had decided to walk away. Was it when she asked if he would meet someone more beautiful at the academy? Was it when she hesitated before telling him he’d talk to her brother someday?

Or was it something he never saw coming at all?

And then there was the lie.

“I don’t need any man in my life besides my dad and brother.”

It had been a clean, sharp exit line. A closure neatly wrapped in detachment. He had believed it once, forced himself to accept it, but now, with time and distance, he knew better. It had never been the truth. It had been a shield, a way to push him away without revealing what truly lay beneath. But if not that, then what?

Was it fear? Was it guilt? Was it something she could never bring herself to admit?

He had once wanted to ask. He had once burned with the need to know. But now, as life had carved him into someone else, he wasn’t sure if the truth would bring peace or only reopen old wounds.

Some truths don’t heal. They just linger like ghosts.

The Life She Left, The Love He Kept

In one of their rare conversations, she had asked, “Do you still believe in love, Ansh?”

He had smiled, a hollow kind of smile, and said, “I believe in what love should be, not in what it became.”

She had gone silent then, a silence that spoke louder than any words could. She never asked him if he had moved on, never asked if he had found someone else. Maybe because she already knew the answer. Maybe because she was afraid of it.

She had let go of the past, but he had carried it with him. He wasn’t trapped in it, but he had never been able to completely set it down either. Some nights, he wondered if she ever looked back, if she ever regretted the love she left behind. Or if, to her, he was simply a phase—something temporary, something that filled the void until she found a way back to whatever it was she had been searching for.

And yet, no matter how much time passed, no matter how much life pulled them in separate directions, Ansh knew the truth.

He had never gotten closure.

And maybe, some stories were never meant to have one.

Because some love stories don’t end. They just remain… lost echoes in time.

----To Be Continued 

Part 1

Part 2