16

There are moments when I swear you look at me differently from everyone else. Your eyes soften up and your eyebrows faintly furrow and your nose scrunches up.

There are moments of silence, we try to fill them with meaningless conversation. Trying to find topics to fixate on until we burn ourselves out on forced words and small talk.

We try so hard to keep in touch, to not let anything come between us. We call each other just to say we talked.

We ask how our days were, only to realize that we are playing out our past twelve conversations.

We use filler words to make it seem like we are interested.

We try to be interested.

But we can’t do this for much longer. At some point, we will run out of things to say to each other.

We’ll grow tired of each other. Our presence will be sickening.

We will be nothing more to each other than happy memories.

Our friendship, stained with every word we didn’t want to say.

Hane Linares, Grade 10

Creative Writing Major