Why is Track 1 Silent?

A story about unspoken love, rooftops, and the silence between lyrics.

The rooftop is cracked and uneven, littered with cigarette butts and ghosts of old conversations that never quite ended. It's the kind of place that only feels safe if you don’t think too hard about it. The city hums below, neon signs flickering, headlights carving through the dark.

He’s sitting on the ledge, one knee pulled to his chest, the other leg dangling over the edge. His sneakers are half-off, laces untied. I don’t tell him. He never ties them anyway.

"You ever think about how some people just... get love songs written about them?"

He says it like it’s nothing. Like it’s just a passing thought, something to toss into the night air and forget.

I pick at the loose threads on my sleeve. "What do you mean?"

"You know," he gestures vaguely, smoke curling from the cigarette between his fingers, "the kind of people who turn someone into a poet just by existing. The ones who get remembered in music, in stories, in dumb little notes folded into lockers. The kind of boys people can’t help but write about."

His voice carries the emptiness of someone who’s never felt like they could be the subject of affection, who doesn’t know that they are, in fact, the very thing I’ve been writing about all along.

He takes another drag and lets it sit in his lungs for a moment before exhaling. "I don’t think I’ve ever been that person."

I almost laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s so unbelievably, devastatingly wrong.

I think about the notebooks shoved under my bed, pages of him pressed between the lines like dried flowers. The songs, half-finished and humming in the back of my throat, all orbiting the same thing. Him, him, always him. The way he moves, the way he talks with his hands, the way he exists in a space like he belongs there without ever realizing it.

But I can’t say any of that. I can’t tell him he’s the melody to every lyric I’ve ever written, the rhythm to every beat that keeps me awake at night, writing his name like it’s my own. So I stay silent, just staring at the city below, wishing I could escape this moment.

I want to tell him. I want to say, You are. You are one of those boys. You are the only one I write about.

Instead, I just shake my head. "You’re an idiot."

He grins, bumping his shoulder against mine. "Yeah, but why this time?"

I shrug. "You just are."

He doesn’t push. He never does. He knows better than to ask when I’m not ready to answer. And in a way, it makes me want to scream with frustration. If only he knew. If only I could show him how he’s always been the one. But the silence lingers between us, comfortable, untouched.

The wind snakes between us, cold and sharp. He shivers. He’s always forgetting a jacket, always underestimating the cold. I tug mine off and drape it over his lap. He doesn’t argue, just tugs it tighter around his shoulders.

And then, softer, almost too quiet to hear.

"Guess I’m just not the kind of person people write about."

That’s when I realize.

The songs that are about us, we never see.

Because maybe someone’s written about me. Maybe there’s a poem, a melody, a scribbled note in the margins of someone’s journal with my name hidden between the letters. And maybe I’ll never know.

Just like he’ll never know about the songs I’ve written for him.

Maybe love is something that moves in secret, something that lingers in the air between people but never quite lands. Perhaps we’re all just standing in the middle of someone else’s unfinished song, never knowing the words were meant for us.

I think about all the times I wanted to say something, to close the distance, to reach across the space between us and let my fingers brush against his. I think about the weight of wanting, about how it settles in my chest like an unanswered question.

I could tell him. I could let the words slip between us, let them unravel in the glow of the streetlights. But I don’t. Because some songs were never meant to be heard. Some things are easier to leave unsaid.

So instead, I just sit beside him, listening to the city, and let the music stay between the lines.