The Sound of Falling

I wrote a story based on my emotional state

Yo this is my first post on here I am a woman lmao but I recently wrote this short story based on my current mental state I’d like y’all’s thoughts on it

“The Sound of Falling”

Eli never said goodbye. He was the kind of person who loved in invisible ways—the kind you only recognized once they were gone. A quiet kind of love. Like leaving the porch light on just in case. Like folding your laundry when you weren’t looking. Like laughing at your joke a little too long just so you wouldn’t feel unheard. No one saw the storm building in him. His grief had learned to wear a human smile. He had survived a lot—too much. The loss of his mother when he was still too young to understand why God lets good things vanish. A father who forgot how to be gentle. A life that asked him to carry too much too early. But he never said a word. Not a whisper. Until the day his sister found the journal. It had been left on the windowsill of his room, open to a single page. It wasn’t a suicide note. It was something else entirely. A poem. A dream. A final imagining from someone who didn’t want to die—but couldn’t bear to keep breathing.

I wonder what it would be like to go skydiving without a parachuteImagining how peaceful it would bePlummetingThroughMid AirInto a sea of cherry blossoms and the ringing sounds of melodiesas you feel the air whipping around youJustCloseYourEyesAndImagine

The last time she saw him, he had smiled. Told her he was tired. That’s all. She thought he meant from work. From life. Just a long day. Not a final one. They never found him. Not really. Just his shoes by the edge of the cliffs and the scent of cherry blossoms lingering in the wind—though there weren’t any trees nearby. It was spring, but not that kind of spring. People told her he was selfish. That he should’ve reached out. That he should’ve stayed. She wanted to scream at them—he did reach out. They just didn’t know how to listen to silence. Now, she reads his poem every night. Sometimes aloud. Sometimes only in her head, so her voice doesn’t crack. She swears she can still hear his laughter in the rustling leaves, in the quiet between waves. As if he never truly left—only fell into something softer than this world. Some nights, she dreams of him falling—not with terror, but with peace. Arms wide open. Eyes closed. Melodies ringing like lullabies as cherry blossoms bloom in the sky around him. And when she wakes, she cries not because he left… …but because no one noticed how long he was holding on.