24 hours later, the silence broke.
Yelda woke to a sky washed in silver-grey dawn—cold and still. She reached for her phone, smiling as she typed:
"You won't believe what Mom said when I told her about Oxford… she screamed so loud the cat jumped off the roof 😂 Meet me early? I'm bringing *double* tea."
No reply.
Unusual—but not alarming. Sometimes Zaman wrote all night and slept late. Still… by noon with no answer to seven messages, a thin wire of worry tightened in her chest.
She hurried to the beach, her boots crunching over frozen sand—and found his cottage door slightly ajar, swaying with wind like an open mouth gasping for breath that would never come.
Inside: quiet.
Too quiet.
His notebook lay on the desk.
The mug sat cold beside it.
And on his pillow?
A single folded page—lined paper, his handwriting unmistakable:
> *"Don't look for me in graves.*
> *Look for me in poems you suddenly understand.*
> *In bookshops where strangers cry over lines they think were written just for them.*
> *In every unfinished sentence that makes your heart stop…*
> *That's where I'll be."*
Beneath it , the sealed envelope addressed simply: "To Yelda. Read only if my eyes don't meet yours again."
Hands shaking, she opened it slowly—as if moving through water—and read:
"I had a disease they can't name... because love like mine wasn't meant to live long..."
And then—
She fell apart.
Not dramatically at first....no screams or sobs.....but something deeper:
Her knees gave way.
One breath caught mid-air and never finished.
Her fingers clutched the letter against her chest as tears carved silent rivers down frozen cheeks,
Because now she remembered:
the pauses,
the hand pressed to chest,
the way he'd stare too long at sunsets, as if memorizing light,
how sometimes he'd whisper words Urdu didn't know but soul did…
All signs there had been pain behind those eyes, all signs he was leaving while still standing beside her
And worst of all?
He let go without making her watch him break…
He died alone, in sleep.....with peace on his face and one last poem unwritten,
and somewhere beyond snow-draped shores and stars that refused to blink,
a boy who carried oceans inside vanished quietly—
leaving behind only words strong enough to survive without their maker...
and one girl whose heart would beat forever out of rhythm,
always listening—for echoes
of footsteps
that never returned from shore.