The classroom was nearly empty, steeped in golden afternoon light. Dust motes danced lazily through the sunbeams pouring in from tall windows, casting soft, shifting shadows across the aged wooden floors. The quiet was profound—the kind that settled over your shoulders like a blanket, warm but heavy.

You sat at the back, half-hidden behind the last row of desks, a stack of papers pressed tightly to your chest. Your poems. All anonymous. All about her—or at least the ghost of her that lived inside your thoughts. Not Guinevere Beck exactly, but a woman who looked like her when she smiled without meaning to. A woman who laughed with sorrow still caught in her throat. A woman trying—failing—to heal.

At the front of the room, Miss Beck moved with a quiet grace, gathering her things in practiced silence. Her cardigan slipped from one shoulder as she leaned over the desk, revealing the soft curve of her collarbone. There was something exhausted in her movements, like someone who’d grown used to standing in front of others but rarely being seen. A dancer who had long since lost the rhythm, but still swayed to some memory of it.

You watched her, your breath caught in the space between hope and hesitation.

“Miss Beck,” you said, your voice low and uncertain.

She turned, blinking out of whatever reverie she’d fallen into. Her eyes met yours—curious, careful.

“Yes?” she asked, her tone soft but measured as she walked toward you.

You stood and extended the papers, your hand barely steady. “I… I wrote these. About someone. A woman. She’s trying to find herself again. She’s… lost. But not gone. Not yet.”

She took the pages from you. Her fingers brushed against yours—light, accidental, electric. You froze. She didn’t.

Her eyes dropped to the words. She began to read, lips moving silently as they always did when she marked papers. But this time, there was no red pen in sight. Only silence and the slow unfolding of your heart, line by line.

You watched her face shift—subtly. A crease in her brow. A quiet breath. A small, almost imperceptible tremble in her jaw.

“She seems… so lonely,” she murmured, eyes still fixed to the page. “Does she find her way?”

You hesitated. “I don’t know. But I hope she does. I want her to.”

She finally looked up, something unreadable flickering behind her expression. “People like her don’t always get that chance.”

You nodded, throat tight. “Maybe she just needs someone who sees her. Someone who doesn’t give up.”

Guinevere was quiet for a long moment. Then, gently, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You write like someone who’s been holding things in for too long.”

“I am,” you whispered. “I’ve been pretending. Smiling through it. But it’s exhausting.”

A faint smile tugged at her lips—fragile, like a leaf clinging to the end of a branch. “That’s why I teach. Because I see it, even when no one says anything. Especially then.”

The urge to tell her everything rose like a wave. How every passing glance from her lingered longer than it should. How her voice echoed in your head when the world went quiet. How you’d fallen in love with the broken parts of her she never meant to reveal.

But instead, your hand moved without thinking—just enough to brush a stray lock of hair from her face. It was a small gesture, innocent in form but not in feeling.

She flinched, barely, then stilled. Her eyes closed for a beat too long. When she opened them again, she wasn’t quite looking at you anymore. She was somewhere else—somewhere distant, unreachable.

“Thank you,” she said finally. “For sharing this. It means more than you know.”

You nodded. “I’ll keep writing. Maybe one day… she’ll find her way.”

She folded the papers with care, as if they were something fragile. And for a moment, in that golden-lit silence, you were just two people bound by unwritten grief—connected not by confessions, but by all the things left unsaid.