Jas sat at his desk, the soft hum of the evening settling around him like a heavy blanket. The room was still—almost too still—and the quiet amplified his thoughts. In his hands, he held the well-worn notebook that had once been her constant companion. It was filled with sketches, poems, and fragments of her mind—echoes of a soul he felt intimately familiar with yet intensely mysterious. He had thumbed through the pages before, but tonight, a deeper longing pulled him toward its contents. The air felt thick, charged with unspoken emotions, and he sensed it was the right moment to explore the quiet corners of her heart.
With a gentle flick, he opened the notebook, his fingers skimming over pages—some wrinkled and frayed, others adorned with hasty ink splatters. Each mark resonated with her essence. The poetry flowed from the pages, its rhythm pulling at the strings of his heart, wrapping him in the weight of her words like ghosts from the past. One line caught his breath: "The heart is a flame, but the hands are cold. How do you hold onto what slips through your fingers?"
These haunting words were a testament to her vulnerability, a glimpse into emotions she had never dared vocalize. The poems were powerful, interwoven with sketches—impressions of abstract lines and unfinished faces. They felt like fleeting glimpses into her soul, parts she had kept hidden from the world. Each unfinished portrait echoed the complexity he sensed in her, a puzzle he had always wanted to piece together.
As Jas delved deeper into her world, a rhythm enveloped him—a heartbeat pulsing through her written words. Each poem resonated with raw emotion, revealing a side of her he had never truly understood but always felt in the depths of his being. The artistry ceased to be just lines and stanzas; it transformed into a dialogue between the past and his present.
He was no longer just a reader; he was a witness to her struggles, her joys, and her complexities. The sketches seemed to call out to him, whispering secrets only he could hear. It was an overwhelming intimacy, both comforting and disorienting. In her absence, the pages became a map of sorrow and love, a testament to the bond they once shared.
The urge to write surged within him, an instinctive reaction to the flood of emotions threatening to spill over. He grabbed his own journal, opening to a blank page, and began to pour his heart onto the paper—not as a letter she would read but as a raw, unfiltered confession to her spirit.
"I don't know how to let go of you," he wrote, his pen trembling as he struggled to articulate the chaos within. "Every time I think I'm moving forward, something pulls me back. Sometimes I think I can hear your voice calling to me, and other times, your laugh feels like a distant echo. You were my constant, my peace. Now everything feels off-kilter, and I don't know how to find my balance without you."
Reflection settled heavily on Jas as he recalled their shared moments—the places they'd frequented, the memories woven into the very fabric of his existence. Each glance around the familiar haunts brought a hollow ache, as if he were searching for shadows that would never return.
"I wish you could've let me in," he continued, "told me what you were really thinking. Maybe I could've saved you from whatever it was that pulled you away from us. But how could I have known? How could I have saved you from this darkness?"
He paused, feeling the weight of guilt as her absence bore down on him. "I don't know if I'll ever find the right answers. Maybe I don't need them. Maybe I just need to learn how to keep going without you. But damn, it's hard."
With ink flowing freely, he wrote for what felt like an eternity, channeling every unspoken thought, every ounce of pain into the journal. Those pages captured his grief, regret, love, anger, and confusion. Each word was a release—a temporary reprieve from the anguish he bore in silence.
The next day, Jas was dimly aware of Malik's presence. It wasn't until Malik broke the silence that Jas could truly register him. "Yo, Jas, you good?" Malik's voice was quiet yet filled with concern, cutting through the fog of Jas's thoughts.
It was the first time Malik had brought up her name since everything had spiraled, and Jas felt the weight of the moment settle heavily between them. Unshed tears burned behind his eyes as he grappled with how to disclose the turmoil he hadn't even begun to acknowledge.
"I… I don't know, Malik," he finally replied, his voice strained and shaky. "I've been holding onto stuff. Stuff I can't really talk about."
Malik didn't press, his understanding evident in the way he nodded, a silent affirmation that he was there for Jas whenever he was ready to share the burden he carried alone.
"Look," Jas said, feeling the words spill from him, "she… she left me with this." He held up the notebook, and Malik's gaze softened, drawn to the artifact of Jas's grief.
"I know," Malik said gently. "You've been through a lot."