Between The Breath and The Silence: Verses on Solitude

Between The Breath and The Silence

By Kavya Nair

The day surrenders in shades of ochre and indigo.
Outside my window, the crows abandon the electric wires,
settling into the neem branches
like commas in an unfinished manuscript.

We mistake silence for emptiness,
as if a page without text carries no weight.
Yet the space between two violin notes
is where the melody actually lives—
the brief suspension where your chest remembers
it has to breathe again.

Do not rush to fill the room with noise.
The evening tea is sweeter
when you let the cup cool untouched,
watching the steam sketch fleeting landscapes
against the fading light.

In the silence, memories shed their sharp edges.
The letters we never posted,
the conversations that ended mid-sentence at railway platforms,
the hands we let go of without looking back—
they do not haunt in the dark;
they simply sit beside us,
quiet as old companions who know
that words were never enough anyway.