Alexa Daskalakis

The Illusion of Stillness

​Not every silence is waiting. Some stillness is already a departure.

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​He thought her silence meant waiting.
That absence held space for return.

But some departures begin in quiet—
a slow undoing beneath the frost,
a root turning from its former light.

He mistook her stillness for tether.
As if not reaching back
meant she had not moved ahead.

But love does not idle in doorways.
And time does not wait
for the ones who watch.

By the time he looked again,
she was gone.
And nothing in her leaving
had made a sound.