January has a way of making the house feel quieter than usual. While the rest of the world is busy making loud declarations about the future, I often find myself looking backward, sifting through the debris of the previous year. It’s the season of cleaning out closets—both the literal ones and the emotional ones.
This year, my cleaning process didn’t involve reorganizing a shelf; it involved reading Jasmines in Her Hair by Kalpesh Desai. I picked it up expecting simple poetry, but what I found was a mirror reflecting a specific, painful chapter of my life I thought I had closed: the loss of a friend I loved, and the silence that grew between us.
We all have that one person. For me, it was a friend who anchored me. We blurred the lines between platonic and something more, existing in that comfortable grey area where you don't need to finish sentences because the other person already knows the end. But then, the misunderstanding happened.
It wasn't a dramatic explosion. There was no shouting match, no glass thrown against the wall. It was just... a failure to speak. I thought they didn't care enough to reach out; they probably thought I was too proud to apologize. We let our egos build a wall where a bridge used to be.
Reading the poem "Bookends" in Desai’s collection stopped me in my tracks. It felt like he had been in the room with us during those final, icy days.
“You and I hurt in silence,
As we sit apart, like bookends.
Heavy thoughts loom,
And like clouds they strain
To fall, as words often do,
Like the rain.”
That was us. Two bookends holding up a story that had ended, facing away from each other, hurting in silence.
The hardest part of falling out with a friend you love is the narrative you create in your head. You convince yourself that their silence is proof of their indifference. You tell yourself, "If they loved me, they would have called."
But as I turned the pages of this book, I stumbled upon a piece titled "Just Because." It dismantled my anger in seconds. It forced me to consider that maybe, just maybe, their silence wasn't about a lack of love, but a lack of ability to show it at that moment.
“Just because I couldn't show it,
Doesn't mean I didn't care.
Just because you couldn't see it,
Doesn't mean I wasn't there.”
I realized that we are often guilty of judging others by their actions while judging ourselves by our intentions. I had judged my friend for their silence, never pausing to think that perhaps they were just as paralyzed by the "Unspoken" as I was.
We can't rewind time. I can't go back to that moment the gap started to widen and force a conversation. That is the tragedy of "Wasted Chances"—the phone calls we didn't make and the plunge we didn't take.
However, Jasmines in Her Hair taught me that closure doesn't always require a reunion. Sometimes, closure is just an internal quietus—a realization that we are allowed to remember the good parts without reopening the wound. The book moves beautifully from the pain of these fractured relationships into a space of "Self-love" and healing.
If you are carrying the weight of a relationship that drifted away, or if you are haunted by things left unsaid to someone you cared for, this book is a gentle companion. It validated my grief but also reminded me that I don't have to live there anymore.
“I just thought I would let you know,
I don't live there anymore.”
This January, I’m not just turning a page on the calendar; I’m turning the page on the guilt of that lost friendship. I’m learning that some people are chapters, not the whole book, and that is okay.
By June Carlo Catulong