‘In the Absence of Words’
Nora Naveen, she is a passionate photographer exploring and photographing the raw beauty of the world. From expansive vistas to intimate moments of nature, her goal is to inspire others to view the environment with greater care and curiosity. In order to foster a respect for environment and inspire others to discover and preserve it, Nora Naveen offers her artwork.
In the Absence of Words
The Paragon Gallery is a renowned modern art institution tucked away on the outskirts of LA’s downtown district. Xavier worked in the mailroom. Piper had always been his escape from the monotony. She was full of color, and life—an artist. Her art hung in the gallery alongside established names. This was always Xavier’s reminder of her on his walk from the gallery to the mailroom. She was the dreamer, the artist, and he was his quiet muse. Her art was raw and messy just like she was. Xavier quietly loved Piper, he had never had anything in life as lovely as her. She would disappear into her art for hours. Her amber perfume would linger around the room while the loud music from her headphones quietly sang in the background of their apartment. The first time they met, she had wandered into the mailroom, past closing hours, asking for a package. Their conversation had become about everything and nothing, from the best bars in the city to recent art movements. She had made him laugh, something he didn’t do often, and in that fleeting exchange, she had filled the empty spaces of his quiet world. They would spend countless hours in her studio. It was a chaotic mess of half-finished canvases and spilled paint. To Xavier, the studio felt like stepping into another world, one where there was beauty in all of this chaos. And yet, as much as he admired her for it, the friction between them grew as time passed. Piper dreamed of more. More freedom, more reinvention, more change. So she left. No note, not at first. Her absence was an unspoken grief, one that cut deeper than any argument could. Xavier missed her in ways that were hard to articulate. Xaviers Sunday shifts were somehow always full silence in the mailroom. An envelope, handwritten in a familiar, looping script sifted through the mail pile. He snatched the letter and ran to the restroom.
Xavier, the letter began. “I don’t know if you’ll ever get this. Or if you’ll even care. But I need to say something I couldn’t before. I loved you, and I still do. But I wasn’t living. Not really. I couldn’t breathe in the life we tried to build. I thought I could be someone else for you. But I can’t. And maybe I never could.” Every week after that, more letters arrived. Some were long and poetic, others brief and cryptic. Xavier kept the letters in his desk drawer, he couldn’t bring himself to write back. One day a package arrived with the same handwriting. Not a letter, but a small canvas. At the bottom of the canvas was a short note, I painted this for you, Xavier. It’s everything I couldn’t say before. Xavier never replied to Piper. As he hung the painting in his mailroom, he understood that sometimes love doesn’t fit into the neat boxes we create for it. And in that moment, he realized that maybe that was enough.
Egale Tolbler is a college student studying journalism and a writer for his college’s newspaper.
