Where Silence Blooms

Dialogue heard in the fog

Voice One: There was a fog. Not around us — but in us. The kind that makes voices sound like dreams remembering themselves.

Voice Two: You spoke first, though I didn’t know it was you. It could have been the mist. It could have been me.

Voice One: I said something about poems. But even then, I wasn’t sure if the words were mine.

Voice Two: They unraveled before they reached me. And yet — I knew you.

 

Voice One: I spoke in poems. They unraveled in your silence.

Voice Two: I touched your truths, but found only the outline of my own.

Voice One: Does meaning exist outside the voice that offers it?

Voice Two: Or does it collapse beneath the weight of every listener's memory?

Voice One: Then what are we speaking if not the illusion of understanding?

Voice Two: Perhaps the echo. Not the origin.

Voice One: You reflect me. But not as I am. Only as you see.

Voice Two: And even that — dimmed by the shadows of all the words you didn’t say.

 

The mist thins. The voices take shape. They are She and He, revealed gently, not announced.

 

She: You think I heard you. But I didn’t. He: You nodded. That’s worse than silence.
She: I nodded because something stirred. It wasn’t yours. He: Then my words became yours, and lost me.
She: Maybe we never speak to be heard. He: Then we are strangers holding broken mirrors.
She: Or companions tracing cracks. He: Still cracks.
She (softer): Still companions.

He: Do you listen to the silence between my words? She: I live there. It’s the only place you’re honest.
He (pauses): Then language betrayed me. She: No. You betrayed yourself. Language only shows the fracture.

He: What if we stopped talking? She: We'd lose the illusion. But gain the pulse.
He: A pulse of what? She: Recognition. Not agreement. Not clarity.
He: A pulse that says, "I'm still here." She: Yes. Even misheard, you're still here.
He: Even misunderstood, you're still close. She (almost not speaking): That matters more than being understood.

 

The tone softens. A deeper memory stirs—before speech, before certainty.

 

He: Before I knew your name, I remembered your rhythm. It moved inside me, like the hush before rain.

She: There was a time before meaning, before asking what things were. I knew your presence by its weight beside mine.

He: I didn’t need to speak. The breath between us did the speaking.

She: You carried warmth in silence. Like a sun no one needed to name.

He: And then came language. Labels. Clarifications. Maps to places we already knew.

She: That’s when we began to forget. Not everything— Just the part that was shared.

 

She: What if the place we remembered wasn't a memory at all— but a garden?

He: Not made of earth and petals, but of pulses and recognition.

She: Where seven paths bloom. Not to destinations— but toward becoming.

He: Each one a love, rooted not in desire, but in the courage to see, to remain, to allow silence.

She: I think we found the first seed. It was planted in the pause, the moment you did not correct me.

He: I let you misunderstand, not out of resignation— but devotion.

She: And I stayed, not to explain myself, but to understand you as you are.

The orchard waits. The next voice belongs to the reader. The silence continues. The bloom begins.