"Movement I — Halls Between Us"- by Aditya Jha
The hallways are empty now.
Not silent, exactly, but hollow, echoes settling
after laughter faded.
I move carefully, touching walls that remember
the weight of a smile I cannot hold.
Windows are gray, light diffused into something soft and strange.
Corners we lingered in remain untouched,
shadows stretching across the floor,
still waiting for voices that never return.
Fragments linger:
a cup left on the table,
the smell of rain on stone steps,
footsteps fading down familiar halls.
Small things,
but they carry memory,
quiet as snow falling on still streets.
I pass the benches where we sat,
the library where whispers swelled into laughter,
the stairwell where we counted heartbeats in silence.
Everything is thinner now,
as though the air has learned to forget.
No one comes here anymore.
Even the footsteps I hear
belong only to me — slow, careful, uncertain.
I trace the edges of memory,
frost spreading over glass, shimmering
for a moment, then melting into nothing.
Time stretches across the floor,
each second a brittle sheet I step upon.
The warmth I thought I carried
was only an echo of something already gone.
I remember us sitting in the courtyard,
the light soft against your hair,
your voice carried off by the wind,
leaving me to listen to what remained:
the stillness, the gaps, the quiet promise
that friendship once held,
held for a moment,
then slipped away.
I walk the hallways slowly,
letting the cold follow me,
fingers brushing tables, windows, doors,
collecting pieces of a memory
that refuses to vanish completely.
The echo of our laughter is faint now,
threads of sound pulled taut in the empty air,
and I do not reach for them.
I let them hang, suspended,
and keep walking,
listening to the hollow music
of what remains.
