The Quiet Between Messages

By Nidhi

It begins with hesitation,

a message written and erased,

rewritten softer, sent anyway.

A risk disguised as a thought.

They reply.

And suddenly the air changes,

like light catching the edge of a curtain.

You talk.

Not about love, not yet,

but about food,

about the comfort of shared taste,

about how someone who understands spice

usually understands people too.

They get you.

Sometimes to the word.

You say ditto and mean how rare.

You trade ideas.

Books, songs, scenes from movies that stayed.

You learn how they think,

curious, layered, unhurried,

the kind of intelligence

that makes you want to listen longer.

They make you laugh.

Not the polite kind,

but the laugh that takes your guard with it.

Their humour is quick, a little sharp,

just enough to prove they see the world

in the same tilted way you do.

You notice the calm too,

how they don’t flinch when things get heavy,

how their steadiness feels earned.

In that quiet,

you find a kind of mirror.

You start keeping lists.

The things you like about them.

The things you’ll never send.

The ones you do,

they answer back with their own.

Admiration written in ordinary words,

tucked into sentences like a secret kindness.

You learn their rituals.

Morning light, coffee,

the patience of someone who shows up.

You tell them their photos make you smile.

You don’t say how much.

The world outside stays loud.

Deadlines, traffic,

the daily ache of being human.

But when you talk,

it softens.

Their attention feels like sunlight

the bloom doesn’t question.

You open a little,

not for them,

but because of how it feels to be seen.

You think before you write.

Not from fear,

but care.

You want to send only what’s true,

what carries its own quiet honesty.

They talk about people who create,

who feel deeply and think clearly,

who love this city and its food.

You realise you want to be that person,

or maybe you already are,

and they just reminded you.

It is not love,

not yet,

but something adjacent,

a small gravity between two people

who look at the world

and find the same patterns.

You keep adding to your lists.

The + things, the unsent thoughts,

the fragments that build a map of knowing.

You don’t label it.

You just let it be,

a quiet understanding,

a space where you both exist

without pretending.

And somewhere in the middle of the talk,

you realise

you are lighter.

That being seen this way

is enough.

By Nidhi