The Last Conversation

We sit across from each other, knowing what the silence says but never daring to speak it aloud. Time stretches between us, fragile, like an old photograph— faded edges, corners curling, memories too distant to hold. I ask about the weather, you reply with the temperature, as if that can fill the spaces we once knew so well. Your eyes flicker, but you don’t say what you really mean, and I don’t either. There are so many things we could have said, things we left unsaid— like the truth of why we’re here, the weight of what’s ending, the ache of what we can never reclaim. We dance around the words, fingers brushing the edges of goodbye, but never grasping it. Instead, we fill the air with nothingness, light conversations, empty words that float like dust settling in the cracks. We talk of distant days, of things we once wanted, dreams that seem so far now, but the truth sits heavy, silent between us, a room full of unspoken goodbyes we’ve learned to live with. And yet, here we are, together but apart, in this last conversation, where every word we say feels like a refusal to face what’s always been. We never mention it— how this will be the end, how everything ends like this— a look, a smile, and a silence louder than any words we could say.