Silence has a different sound when it sits in a house that once knew music. It presses into the walls. It crawls into the corners. At night, it found me in my bed and lay beside me like an unwelcome companion. I would stare at the ceiling and imagine her shadow moving across the hallway, her humming drifting from the kitchen, the scent of her hair oil hanging in the air. But the house remained still. Too still.
Her voice on the phone began to change. It wasn't just the tiredness anymore. It was thinner somehow, as if each word had to climb its way out. She still asked about school, about my cousin, about whether I had eaten. Always about me, never about her. When I asked how she was doing, she laughed softly and said she was fine, always fine. But something in that laugh didn't quite reach the end.
I began to notice the gaps between our conversations. Calls that ended too quickly. Messages that went unanswered for hours, then days. I would watch my phone as if my eyes alone could make it ring. I kept it close, even in the shower, even when I slept, afraid that if she called and I missed it, something terrible would happen.
At school, the world carried on as if nothing had changed. Laughter echoed in the corridors. Friends gossiped about crushes, teachers complained about homework, the sun still rose there each morning as if everything was exactly as it had always been. I walked through it all like a ghost. Present, but untouched. My grades began to tremble. Concentration escaped me. I would sit in class, eyes on the board, mind a thousand kilometres away in a hospital room I had never even seen.
Sometimes, anger visited me without warning. Anger at the teachers. At my friends. At my boyfriend. At the sky. At God. I resented happiness when I saw it. I resented health, laughter, normal mothers picking up their children from school and kissing them on the forehead. I wondered why mine had to go away when I still needed her here. I wondered if I had done something wrong.
The visits from Gauteng felt like short dreams that ended too quickly. She looked smaller each time, like someone erasing her little by little from the world. Her hugs felt lighter, yet somehow heavier with everything she wasn't saying. I would bury my face in her shoulder and breathe her in, afraid that one day I would forget her scent.
And when she left again, something inside me cracked quietly.
I still had a boyfriend. I still had a life on paper. But inside, I was folding in on myself. Becoming quieter. Watching the world through a fog that refused to lift. I started writing her name in the margins of my books, on my hands, on my heart, as if it could keep her closer, as if ink was strong enough to hold a person in place.
Yet somewhere deep inside me, a terrifying thought began to whisper.
What if she doesn't come back this time?