— an expanded, emotional telling by Aba
Aba learned early how to keep love quiet.
She folded it into herself the way women fold cloth they cannot afford to lose, carefully, reverently, with the fear that exposure would wear it thin. She loved without language. She cared without confession. When her heart swelled, she pressed it down and smiled instead. Silence felt safer than hope.
People mistook her calm for strength. They did not see the nights when words gathered behind her teeth and begged to be spoken. They did not hear the apologies she practised in the dark, or the thank-yous she carried like small stones in her pockets, waiting for the right moment that never came.
Time, however, is impatient with unspoken things.
Days slipped into seasons. The mango tree in her yard bloomed generously, then shed its fruit to the ground where sweetness bruised into waste. Friendships thinned. Love letters she never wrote turned into memories that hurt for no clear reason. The love Aba had guarded so fiercely did not die loudly, it faded quietly, worn down by neglect, like fabric left untouched for too long.
One morning, while walking a dusty path under a tired sun, Aba saw an old woman giving bread to children whose hands were already empty. The woman’s laughter was easy, unafraid, as if joy were not something that could ever run out.
Aba watched, puzzled. Finally, she asked, “Aren’t you afraid you’ll have nothing left?”
The woman smiled, lines deepening around eyes that had seen both hunger and abundance.
“Because I don’t keep it,” she said simply.
That sentence followed Aba home.
That night, she did something unfamiliar. She spoke gratitude out loud—to no one in particular, and to everyone at once. She forgave an old hurt without being asked. She offered help where pride once held her back. Each act felt like loss at first, like tearing away a protective layer.
But something unexpected happened.
She felt lighter. Fuller. As if the heart, once opened, had discovered it was made to breathe.
Aba began to understand that love is not preserved by hiding it. It is preserved by movement. By risk. By giving it voice and hands and action. Love kept inside does not stay pure—it grows lonely. It fades.
And so Aba chose differently.
She loved openly now, imperfectly, without guarantees. She spoke when her heart trembled. She gave when she feared she had little left. And each time, love returned, not always from the same place, not always in the same form, but enough to remind her of the truth she had learned too late to forget:
Love that is kept inside will surely fade.
The only gifts we ever truly receive
are the ones we give away.
And in giving, Aba finally received herself.
