The Silence I Kept for You

The folder said BANK, but it held no numbers I could read anymore. Only the weight of eleven hours leaning against a desk that was never mine.
I smoothed my skirt with one hand and let my other rest on my thigh as if confirming I still existed. The fluorescent light hummed its cold liturgy above me; the filing cabinets stood like silent judges who had already ruled against me.
Then your name lit up on my phone, just two characters, and something behind my ribs cracked open with a sound only I could hear. Not a scream. A flood. The kind that rises quietly in deep water until it swallows everything whole.
I walked to you with heels that clicked like a slow heartbeat, and when you pressed your coffee cup into my hands I did not say thank you. I said nothing at all. I just let the warmth climb up through my palms and break, at last, the architecture of my loneliness. You looked at me as if you had always known I was holding up the ceiling by myself.
That night I told no one how close I came to dissolving on that white desk. I only kept the cup, empty now, warm forever.

Editor: Deep Sea