The Founder's Day was fast approaching, and the whole campus buzzed with a blend of excitement and exhaustion. Final exams loomed like thunderclouds, the seminar thesis deadline was breathing down everyone's neck, and somehow, we were still expected to smile through it all.
The Creative Writing Department had been given a major role in the celebrations. I was selected to deliver a speech on "Power and Politics". For the first time, I felt like my voice mattered not just for me, but for everyone like me who had ever been silenced.
No course is useless,I told myself.
No voice is too small. I'll make them hear me.
I was going to shake the hall with words. Burn their biases with fire from my pen. Let them know that even in this city where hierarchy decided who mattered, people like me still had something powerful to say.
I didn't go to Franklin Park that night,
But my soul did.
His voice haunted me like a forbidden song stuck on repeat.
He hadn't said much.
But sometimes, silence from men like him was louder than thunder.
I didn't know if I was standing my ground… Or walking away from my only chance.
POV: Maybe I'm not brave. Maybe I'm just scared with expensive dreams and a heart that forgets its place.
At school, I tried to pretend everything was normal.
But Mary noticed of course, she did.
You've been sighing like a widow all morning, she said, rolling her eyes.
Luna, did he break your heart already?
He didn't even touch it, I muttered.
It broke itself, by myself and by my ancestors.
Ben didn't say anything. He just passed me my pen, the one I didn't realize had dropped and shook his head like he was watching a slow, tragic movie.
One day, he said, you'll realize men like that eat girls like you for breakfast.
Thanks, Ben. Always a ray of sunshine.
You're the one dating in your imagination. I'm just here for the weather forecast.
At home, things had begun to shift too.
Days ago, I did something brave, something unthinkable in my house.
I sat my parents down and tried to talk.
It wasn't perfect.
No magical healing moment. No sudden hugs or tears.
But the walls began to melt.
Dad started saying thank you more.
Mum started humming when she cooked.
Even Ama and Nice, my little lightning bolts started knocking before entering my room.
Tiny cracks in the silence.
Small victories. But in a house like mine, even air felt like progress.
We don't need to be perfect, I told them one evening.
We just need to stop pretending we're not broken.
I spent my evenings buried in research preparing my speech.
Library visits became therapy.
The new park Franklin Park became my writing room.
The trees were starting to feel familiar. The birds might've even started recognizing me.
The gentle stream? That was my safe place.
The artistic sculptures lining the path? Silent teachers whispering truth into my soul.
But reality always found a way to crash in.
Dawn Bill's image was everywhere on TV, on billboards, in newspapers.
The entire city couldn't stop singing about him.
His latest business venture. His donation to a children's hospital. His appearance at a leadership summit.
And then there he was in a tabloid photo.
Arm in arm with a stunning woman.
I couldn't explain how I felt.
Jealousy?
No, just displaced.
POV: Maybe I never had a chance. Maybe I only made one up. Either way, nothing was ever defined and yet I feel like I lost something.
I kept hoping he would reach out.
A call, a message, anything.But silence came instead,and silence, too, speaks.