What can you do for a thousand words?
A mere picture can easily worth a thousand, one word can mean a whole lot more.
Five, five words was the only thing he needed. Those five were simply enough for him.
Hello, my name is Winter.
A silence can say what a sentence never could. And the right word arrives where a thousand others failed. Some things are spoken only once, and could last forever.
One name, and the whole world stops.
Winter
It's cold, freezing cold, a mind boggling thought that comes up with every other person that's thought of it. Everyone has their own Winter story, the good and the bad, everyone.
But his Winter was different.
Warm, where you can easily melt around it without even feeling a single thing called pain. That was the strange part, it was really strange, he thought.
Why would someone, named after a cold season, could make you feel like it's the last bit of warmth the sun could ever provide?
It doesn't burn.
He wasn't able to come up with an answer, how did she do it? How was she able to make it feel like it's as easy as breathing fresh air?
Maturing was realizing that some things will never go your way, that the universe doesn't bend for longing.
But the heart doesn't stop longing anyway.
Does she know? she doesn't, will she know? I don't know either.
All he knows is that she loves her, and that was enough for him.
Reciprocation is not always involved with love, it was never involved to begin with. And yet, he still chose to love her, again and again and again. Even when the odds were against him.
He always listened, again and again, through certain and the uncertain, he was just there, listening.
She had always said, you're special.
Because to him, that was a gift and a boundary he cannot cross.
He was safety without risk, comfort without consequences, a place she can fall softly. A silent sanctuary.
She does like him, in a way you like a song you're too afraid to play out loud.
So she kept him in a space, between almosts and nevers. A vacuum where feelings exists but will never bloom.
And yet, he was just there. It hurt, but it was never about hurting to begin with, but it's because loving someone was never always about being loved in return.
It was only about loving her, Winter, loving her again and again.
That was it's own kind of answer.
It still hurt, a lot. He says, he pulled back, backed down. And yet, he still found his way coming back to her.
It was still an answer, nevertheless.
The moment he had confessed everything, he had steeled himself from whatever the outcome will be.
But why? Why does it still hurt?
That's what he thought, he thought that understanding her will numb all the pain he felt that day.
Even then, it was never about being hurt.
A steel, heat can pass through, it can feel warmth.
But even the toughest of steels can still deformed, intentional or not.
That was what he felt, like a steel, a rigid body, capable of feeling warmth, but was also capable of feeling it, being crushed.
Idiot, He thought.
But even idiots find their way home sometimes.
He laughed at that. A small, quiet thing, the kind nobody hears. The kind that lives only in the space between what you feel and what you're willing to say out loud.
Because that was him, wasn't it? Finding his way back. Always finding his way back. Not because the hurt had gone anywhere, it hadn't, it lived in him like a splinter he'd stopped trying to remove, but because the alternative was a world where he'd never said hello to her at all.
And he wouldn't, couldn't, shouldn't wish that away.
Not her laugh. Not the way she said his name like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, not knowing it became the best part of his day every single time. Not the quiet moments where she trusted him with the soft, unguarded parts of herself she didn't show just anyone.
He got to witness that.
Even steel, at its coldest, can hold the shape of something beautiful.
Maybe that was enough. Maybe it had to be. His breathing, long and slow, his hands were shaking, tears were flowing down his cheeks.
It hurts so much.
I didn't even look for you, you just suddenly became part of my everyday.
Doubt crept in, doubts, doubts, doubts, he doesn't like the feeling of it, he despised that feeling more than pain.
I didn't even look for you.
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