Tag: dailyprompt-1893

Sometimes, I imagine you.

Not as a number. Not as a “reach” or a “metric.” But as someone sitting at a table somewhere—a dim kitchen, maybe, or a noisy café, or a quiet room lit only by the glow of your phone. Someone who reads these words not out of obligation, but out of shared hunger. For stillness. For meaning. For something soft and true in a world that often feels loud and fast and indifferent.

If you’re here, still reading, still checking in, still carving out a moment in your day to be with these small stories—I see you.

And I want to say thank you.

Thank you for returning. Thank you for the messages, the quiet likes, the times you’ve shared a piece with someone else because it reminded you of them. Every visit, every reread, every small act of support is felt more deeply than I can explain.

This space exists because of you. Because you chose to slow down, to be still for a moment, to feel something real.

If any of this has ever spoken to you—if a single sentence sat with you a little longer than expected—please consider sharing it. Send it to someone you care about. Whisper it into someone’s week. Let these quiet words move a little further.

Stories don’t live in silence. They breathe through connection. Through being passed hand to hand, heart to heart.

So thank you. For being here. For staying. For returning.

I’ll keep writing, if you keep reading.

Always.

They were sitting on the back porch, the late sun pooling between the fig leaves, casting everything in that golden, aching light that only ever shows up when a season is about to end. She wiped plum juice from her fingers with the hem of her apron, slow and careful, like it hurt to be too fast with anything anymore. He trimmed a loose thread from the seat cushion like it was a ritual. Not because the cushion needed fixing, but because it felt good to fix something. Even something small. Especially something small.

Their son had asked the question that morning, over coffee that went cold before anyone drank it.

“If you could have something named after you, what would it be?”

She had laughed, soft and hollow, like a drawer that doesn’t close all the way. He had shrugged. And now, the question hung in the late light like mist that never quite burned off.

She spoke first, her voice frayed and familiar.

“Not a building. Too cold.”

He nodded. “Not a bench. Too easily sat on. Too easily forgotten.”

She smiled without looking at him. “A cocktail?”

He exhaled through his nose. “Too bitter. And someone would ruin it with rosemary.”

Then came the quiet. That particular kind of silence only people who’ve run out of performances can share. The insects hummed, the fig tree stirred, time softened its grip.

She said, “If it had to carry my name, I’d want it to be something living.”

“Living?”

“A bird, maybe. Something small. One that sings in the morning and never knows who’s listening. One that shows up in strange places, uninvited but never unkind.”

He looked at her, but she was somewhere else now. In a memory or a place that no longer existed.

“I’d want it to be a dog,” he said finally. “One of those quiet ones. The kind that just sits beside you. No tricks. No barking. Just presence. That kind of loyalty. That kind of forgiveness.”

She blinked slowly, turned to him. “A bird and a dog.”

“Better than a library.”

“Or a bridge.”

They didn’t laugh. They just sat there, letting the idea settle. Letting the light do what it always does when no one tries to name it.

The sun dipped. The sky bruised. A single plum pit sat between them like something sacred.

They had named nothing.

But the world was already full of things that moved like them. That forgave like them. That waited and sang and stayed.

And in that quiet, in that soft gold of everything unsaid—
something had already taken their names.

Two stones in a stream—
Weathered by time, softened by current,
Still side by side.

---

He watched them from the kitchen doorway. His mother sat by the window, cutting plums for a tart no one had asked for, humming a song no one remembered. His father was outside, pruning the fig tree with the same careful intensity he once reserved for spreadsheets and silent prayers.

They didn’t talk much that morning. They rarely did anymore. Not because there was nothing to say—but because everything had already been said, a hundred times over, in different shapes and tones. The words had folded into gestures. Into silence. Into the kind of understanding that doesn’t require punctuation.

In their youth, it was all noise. Heated arguments about burnt rice. Plans that shifted. Children who screamed, and laughed, and made their hearts ache in beautiful, unbearable ways. There were slammed doors, long drives to nowhere, and whispered apologies in bed with their backs turned but their feet still touching.

Falling in love had been easy. Effortless. The brain lights up, the heart forgets how to beat properly. That chemical—what was it called again? Oxytocin? Yeah, that.

But staying in love? That was war. A gentle, everyday war of compromise and forgetting just enough.

---

And yet, here they were.

Fifty years.
Three children.
Three thousand mornings.
Too many mini-arguments to count.

They didn’t match. Not really. She was erratic and poetic, full of contradictions and long pauses. He was linear and quiet, with a smile that only really came alive when he was walking uphill.

But they had learned to fit.

She still complained about how he woke at 5 a.m. like it was a personal offense to sleep.
He still teased her into booking tickets for trips she swore she was too tired to take.
They still disagreed about curtains, olive oil, and whether the news was worth watching.

But their days had found a rhythm.

---

The kids were gone now. Scattered like paper boats down distant rivers.

And in their place—
A kind of peace.

Not the peaceful silence of nothingness.
But the hum of something built slowly, without spectacle.
The peace of knowing someone will always notice if you don’t come home.
The peace of shared memory, of faces that have seen each other through illness, failure, joy, and mornings with burnt toast.

---

Wabi-Sabi and the Art of Lasting Love

Love is not always passion.
Sometimes it’s peeling fruit in quiet rooms.
Sometimes it’s knowing the same story by heart and still pretending to be surprised.
Sometimes it’s growing in opposite directions but finding that your roots are still tangled underneath.

---

There was nothing spectacular about them.
No grand gestures.
No perfect Instagram moments.

Just two people, who—against the odds,
Despite the fraying edges—
Had become one.

Not in some magical way.

But in the real, imperfect, ordinary miracle
of staying.