A soft reflection on becoming quieter in a world that once felt gentle, where being kind and open was noticed, but not always understood. A story of how silence isn’t always who you are, but something you slowly learn… and what still remains beneath it.
-Hafsa Raja
There is a particular kind of mourning reserved for the girls who began as summer. I remember her well, the one who entered every room with a heart like an unlatched window, letting the world blow through her without fear. She was gentle by nature and kind by choice, moving through the world with a carefree step that felt like a song played in a major key. To those who looked at her, she was a pleasant thing, light, easy, a soft glow that demanded nothing and gave everything. She was visible, yes, but she was never truly seen. She was merely a backdrop for the comfort of others.
But the world has a way of turning the softest hearts into museums of quiet tragedies. Like Ophelia, who gathered her wildflowers with a mind full of light only to find the current of the river was stronger than her will to float, I learned that being open is often an invitation for the world to pour its heaviness into you. I was the girl who smiled until the muscles in my face forgot how to rest, the one who cared until my own reflection became a stranger in the water. I was told to be quiet, to be small, to be the peace in a room full of storms, until the major key of my life began to slip into a low, haunting minor.
We are the heirs of a beautiful ruin. Like the ancient stones of a fallen kingdom, our cracks are not failures of architecture but the history of our survival. I look back at the girl I was that light, easy creature and I see her as a ghost haunting the hallways of who I am now. The world changed me, stripping away the carefree petals until only the stem remained, cold and resilient in the frost.
If you are reading this, perhaps you too are a daughter of the willow tree. Perhaps you have been told that your softness is a weakness or that your silence is your only value. But here, in this space between the fog and the fading light, we do not have to be "easy" anymore. We are the ones who were noticed for our light but are finally being seen for our shadows. We are the story that remains after the music stops, the lingering spark in the marrow of the stars, finally allowed to speak of the weight we carry in the quiet.
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