Kafka, Me, and You

It begins on a quiet afternoon. The kind where the sky is pale and uncertain, and the air carries a stillness that feels like a question. You sit across from me, your fingers resting lightly on the pages of a book. Kafka. Of course.

I watch you read. The world outside moves on, but in this small corner, time folds gently. I wonder what you see in those words if you feel the same quiet ache I do when Kafka writes of people who are always almost becoming, but never quite. His characters wander, searching for doors that never open, letters that never arrive.

See, In reality we are like that too.

I imagine a story where Kafka writes about us. Two people sitting together, yet wrapped in their own silences. We do not speak much. But there is a rhythm to our stillness, like waves brushing against the shore and retreating. If Kafka wrote it, he would fill the spaces between our words with longing, a longing not for more words, but for understanding.

You

You turn a page. The sound is soft but feels loud in the quiet room. You glance at me and smile, a small, fleeting thing, but I catch it. For a moment, I forget Kafka’s sadness. For a moment, I think perhaps this story might end differently.

But we are who we are. You close the book slowly, as if ending a conversation you’re not ready to finish. The sky outside begins to darken. There is no grand ending, no sudden revelation. Kafka would approve.

Still, as we step out into the fading light, walking side by side but not touching, I wonder,

In another story, would we have reached for each other in Lifetime ? Evening drapes its silence over us, as if the sky itself is holding its breath for our unfinished story.

And I wish for evenings like this with you, a thousand times over.

But for now, this is enough:

Kafka. Me. And you.

A story still unfolding in the quiet between words.