Writteninmargins

Social standoffs have never really been my thing, yet somehow, I keep finding myself entangled in them. Those observed silences where two people lock eyes while mentally searching for safe words.

Maybe it’s because eye contact becomes an accidental truth. Maybe we’re afraid that if someone looks closely enough, they’ll see the edges of the masks we hold up so carefully in conversation. It’s ironic that the moment silence appears, the mask begins to peel without anyone touching it.

Or maybe it’s because silence reveals the script running out. Constructed conversations always have an ending, even if neither person knows how to write the final line.

I think it’s less about the silence itself and more about what eye contact makes you feel. Humans hate silence. Silence offers little distraction and too much deliberation. Filler words rush to the surface because how on earth can we go a full minute without filling the air with “So… yeah.” “Anyway.” “That’s crazy.”

But there’s a softer side to silence that we rarely talk about. It’s the shared realization that something quiet now stretches between two people. Awkward eye contact lives in that small gap where conversation ends but connection hasn’t yet decided what it is.

There is a strange kind of connection in that silence.

When the light finally touches me, a creature appears. It spills from my feet and stretches across the ground, a darker outline poured carelessly in my shape. It belongs to me, yet it reaches further than I ever could. It moves when I move. It breathes when I breathe.

But the light reaches us differently…Touching me while creating her. She accepts it silently; I endure it.

They say looking at your shadow means you are becoming aware of yourself. That somewhere in that reflection lies the truth of who you are. But when I look at mine, it doesn’t feel like awareness. It feels like resentment.

My shadow never falters. It never doubts the space that it takes up. When I step forward, it follows without hesitation, stretching itself confidently across walls and pavement. When I shrink, it shrinks with me, but it never disappears willingly. Only the absence of light can take it away.

I wonder what it feels like to exist like that. To be certain of your place the moment the light finds you.

I spend so much time trying to understand who I am, yet the moment the light touches me, my shadow already knows exactly what it is.

I think the only resonance we have is that we are somehow always waiting for light to touch us.

Perhaps that is why I watch it so closely. Not because it reveals me, but because it feels like it knows something about me that I don’t.

Nobody talks about the pause before rain starts. We talk about the downpour about running for cover, about the remnants of puddles left behind and leaves that never quite dry after their shower.

We talk about the crashes that jolt heart rates and deafen ears.

But never the heaviness before.

The birds going quiet, waiting as if a secret is about to be told. The sky slowly bruising. The wind holding its tongue. The taste of metal in the air.

I think it’s easier to speak of the storm than of the uncertainty. The part where the world inhales and we don’t quite know if it will exhale.

If the glass, filled to the brim, will finally give.

The kitchen: a small stage for reflection. The ritual. The script. The kettle, well, the kettle. The microphone. Boiling it feels less like a three-act play. More like improv.

The water rises, a mirror to the tempests within. The conscious click of the switch. Amusing how the kettle always takes four to six minutes. And yet, time stretches, flowing through the undercurrents of the subconscious.

The sodden sink, the dripping tap, somehow worse. The start of the boil: fleeting moments of clarity or frustration. Disturbed by the curling steam. Thoughts rise and disperse with the water.

The moment one slips into a wallet, we assume the memory travels with it. Friction, heat, the insistence of light, they remind the holder that nothing small is meant to last. I don’t think we talk enough about how receipts fade.

Receipts are temporary records of momentary exchanges. The ink doesn’t disappear all at once; it thins.

Receipts are proof that something happened. And proof disappears. Purchases become questionable. Moments lose documentation. Small days go unrecorded.

Does that mean when the ink’s final line fades, the purchase never happened?

The smaller things, milk and bread, a coffee at your favourite café, they live in wallets, while the bigger purchases are tucked safely in drawers. Who decided which mattered more?

The receipts don’t tell you that the milk was dropped off at a friend in need, or that the coffee marked the start of a budding romance.

Does that make it any less important than a “big” purchase?