Before there was silence, there was music in everything she did. The way she smiled at me across the classroom. The way her voice curved when she said my name soft, careful, like it was something fragile she didn't want to break.
She was older three grades ahead. She had already lived the school years I was still trying to survive. But when we spoke, it felt like time melted. Around her, I never felt small or young. I felt safe. I felt seen.
She walked like she belonged to the sky quiet, luminous, unreachable. But somehow, I got close. Closer than anyone else. And in that nearness, I discovered parts of myself I never knew existed.
She loved the moon. She once told me it reminded her of peace. So I started watching it too, hoping we were both staring at the same sky. On the nights she didn't reply, I still whispered to it, "She's looking at you too, right?"
Once, she touched my wrist when I was feeling down. No words, no questions just warmth. I carried that feeling with me like a hidden scar made of light.
She used to braid my hair during lunch break. Her fingers brushed my neck, and my heart nearly collapsed from the weight of that closeness. When she laughed and said, "I'm better at fixing hearts than hair," I wanted to tell her mine was already breaking.
I brought her a sunflower once. "This smells like warmth," she said. I wished, in that moment, I could become sunlight just to stay near her.
We weren't lovers. But we were something sacred. Something soft. Something no one else saw but me.
She made me feel like Neptune distant and cold, but still full of motion and mystery. She was my sun. And I orbited her with quiet devotion, never asking to be seen, just grateful to exist in her light.
And I would have kept spinning around her forever if only time had stood still.