Author: Nitya Valimbe, Class X E
They flicker like half-remembered dreams—
those quiet windows
that carry the scent of a thousand yesterdays,
still warm, still waiting.
Not quite light,
not quite shadow—
just that space in between
where nothing is said,
but everything is heard.
There are rooms behind them.
Locked.
Flooded.
Carved with names no one speaks aloud anymore.
A father who didn’t stay.
A friend who did—
and maybe shouldn’t have.
Moments that curled into corners,
too tender to touch.
Too real to forget.
Some carry storms
so still,
you’d think peace lived there—
until you notice
how carefully the quiet is placed,
like glass on a fault line.
And then there are those
that hold entire lifetimes in a single glance.
Not stories—
but fragments.
A breath caught in the throat of childhood.
A question never answered.
A goodbye that never learned
how to say itself out loud.
They look at the world
as if it might disappear
if stared at too long.
As if joy is a myth
written in another tongue.
As if they’ve learned
that nothing beautiful
stays.
Some shimmer when spoken to softly,
not because they believe it—
but because they want to.
Hope, for them,
is a borrowed coat in winter.
Warm,
but never theirs to keep.
They do not weep.
They ache.
Silently.
With the elegance of porcelain
that knows its own cracks
by heart.
And when they close—
it is not sleep.
It is retreat.
A quiet folding inward,
where the soul goes to remember
who it was
before it had to become so careful.
These are not just eyes.
They are archives.
Unsung hymns,
shards of every version of self
that dared to feel too deeply.
They do not look—
they remember.
No need to name them.
You’ve seen them.
Felt them.
Maybe you are them—
walking through the world
with everything unsaid
pressed gently
behind the glass.
