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Novelo Rectangle

She couldn’t remember how she got here, standing in the middle of her living room, staring blankly at the cracked coffee cup on the floor. Her fingers still trembled, as though they’d just released it, but the sound of its shattering felt like an echo from another world. The silence was too loud now. It had been for weeks, ever since her son left. The house, once filled with his laughter, footsteps, and the sound of the refrigerator door opening a hundred times a day, had become an unbearable void. Every room echoed with memories of him—loud, sharp, and relentless, yet now replaced by a stillness that felt almost punishing. He was just twenty, but already so certain that he didn’t need her anymore. She had seen it coming, like a slow-moving storm on the horizon. The way he pulled away during their last months together, spending less time in the living room and more locked in his bedroom, headphones on, his world shrinking into whatever existed on the other side of his phone screen. There had been moments, though, brief glimpses of the child she once knew. A lazy Sunday morning when he sat beside her, half-heartedly watching TV while scrolling through his phone, or the rare occasions when he joined her for dinner, his face lit by the glow of his screen as they shared the silence between them. But those moments grew fewer, and the gaps between them stretched longer. She wanted to ask him what was wrong, to sit him down and tell him how much she missed him. But whenever she tried, he met her with that infuriating wall of teenage indifference, his answers clipped, his patience thin. “I’m fine, Mom. Just tired.” Or, “I’m busy.” It seemed as though their connection was fraying right in front of her, but no matter how hard she grasped at it, she couldn’t hold on. When he finally told her that he was leaving, it was over breakfast. The coffee had been too strong that morning, bitter and sharp, much like his words. “I need to figure things out,” he had said, his spoon stirring the cereal in a distracted rhythm. “I need to get out of here.” Out of here. Her heart sank as she looked across the table at him, the boy she had raised, the boy who used to cling to her leg when he was nervous, the boy who used to tell her everything. He was a man now—taller than her, his face lined with the beginnings of adulthood, but still a boy in so many ways. And here he was, telling her he was ready to leave. “Where will you go?” she had asked, her voice calm despite the storm brewing inside her chest. “I don’t know yet. I've saved enough to afford a flat. And I will still have my part-time work.” He said it like it was that simple. Like it wouldn’t break her heart to see him pack his bags and disappear into the unknown, far from the life they had built together. “And school?” she had asked, her last attempt to ground him, to remind him of his responsibilities. He shrugged, as if the years of planning, applications, and scholarships meant nothing. “I’ll figure it out. I just… I need to go, Mom. I can’t stay here anymore.” His words were a punch to the gut. She didn’t ask for more. Didn’t push. She could see in his eyes that he had already made up his mind. The certainty in his voice, the restlessness in his movements—it was as though the house had become too small to contain him. She could feel him slipping away, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. So, she had smiled, nodding like she understood, when in reality, all she wanted to do was beg him to stay. But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t hold him back when he was so desperate to leave, even though the ache in her chest told her this wasn’t just about finding himself. It was about escaping her, escaping the weight of their home, their family. It felt like he was running from her, from everything she had spent the last twenty years building. She had spent the weeks after he left replaying that breakfast conversation, trying to pinpoint where things had gone wrong. It was a cruel kind of self-torture, but she couldn’t help it. She wondered if she had been too overbearing, if she had smothered him with her constant worry, her texts, her need to be close. Or had she been too distant, too caught up in her own struggles to notice him drifting away until it was too late? The day he left, she had stood in the doorway as he threw his duffle bag into the back of a friend’s car. He hadn’t looked back, not even once. He didn’t see her wiping the tears from her eyes as the car pulled away. And she didn’t call him back. She just stood there, watching the road long after the car had disappeared, until the cold seeped through her sweater and forced her inside. The first few days had been unbearable. She had expected it to be hard, but she wasn’t prepared for how much his absence would crush her. The house felt wrong without him. She found herself standing in the middle of his room, staring at the empty bed, the scattered remnants of his life still left behind: a crumpled t-shirt, old notebooks, an unfinished video game console that still hummed faintly with the last trace of his presence. It was like he had evaporated, leaving only ghosts of who he had been. She had tried calling him a few times. At first, he answered—brief, awkward conversations that felt more like obligations than real talks. He told her he was fine, that he was working, that everything was good. But the calls grew shorter, the pauses longer. And soon, they stopped altogether. He hadn’t called in over a week now.His absence carved an ache deep in her chest, one that no amount of words or phone calls could touch. It was the kind of pain that sat heavy inside her, refusing to leave, refusing to let her forget that he was gone. Some nights, she sat in the living room, waiting for her phone to buzz with a message, anything to remind her that he was still out there, that he still thought of her. But the phone stayed silent, just like the house, and she was left alone with her thoughts. She didn’t want to admit it, but part of her wondered if he’d ever come back. And if he did, would he still be the boy she knew, or would the world outside change him in ways she couldn’t recognize?

Of Loss and Betrayal

mariemirage

MarieMirage

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When silence is too loud

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Marie Khan

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