Writers Jam

there are three of us in this story two friends, one secret and a silence that pretends to be ordinary. we sit beneath the crumbling arch of school days, chalk dust in our lungs, dreams written in the margins of borrowed notebooks. she laughs like bells on a distant bicycle he watches me as if I am a page he’s afraid to turn. sometimes I think memory is a cruel religion it keeps asking for offerings long after the gods have gone. I build small temples inside my chest, one for each afternoon that refused to fade. their names echo through the corridors of my ribs, their shadows hum beside my desk. I was never the popular one. never the one surrounded by noise or colour. my world was made of two voices one teasing, one too tender to admit its truth. and in between them, I learned how to write how to turn ache into architecture. maybe I wanted to be someone’s favourite author because I was never someone’s favourite person. maybe I mistook love for attention and attention for proof that I existed. still, when I close my eyes, I see the three of us under a dim sky of half-grown dreams, our futures still wet with possibility. the temple stands there too, built from unspoken words offering light to all that could have been. and if anyone ever visits it, I hope they kneel not to worship, but to remember that even quiet girls with two best friends and one secret heart can build eternity out of memory and ink