Silence can exist even when someone is sitting beside you.
In a classroom filled with voices,
only my desk seemed to swallow sound,
as if the air itself refused to carry it.
Laughter.
The rustle of paper.
The dry scratch of chalk across the board—
all of it reached me from somewhere far away.
No one was my enemy.
And yet, to keep the shape of myself intact,
I needed distance.
If anyone came too close,
the roughness of the past would return—
that faint, stinging memory I had buried under calm.
So I chose the quiet.
After school, I stayed in the library,
opening a book beneath the dim light.
Outside, the sunset painted the walls in red,
and the shouts of the sports teams echoed in the distance.
None of it belonged to me anymore.
Strangely, I felt no loneliness.
Only peace.
In that silence, unseen by anyone,
unbound by expectation,
I found myself again.
This is enough, I thought.
To breathe quietly,
to live in a world that belongs to no one but myself—
it may be small,
but it is a freedom that is real.