Words for Nobody

some things never have names.
some things never need them.

there's a kind of love that doesn't look like declarations or grand arrivals, but like clocking someone's sigh and wordlessly passing them the right mug. like sending a song with no message attached. like walking side by side in silence, knowing exactly where to stop for the good chips.

what rituals do you share with the people who get you, quietly?

the quiet cup made at 3am because both of you woke from different dreams.
the playlist you always put on when driving the long way round.
the old inside joke you still resurrect like a prayer.
the split dessert order.
the soft glance when someone else doesn’t quite understand.
the swapping of book piles without asking.
the ritual of not needing to say: “i love you,” because it’s there in the shared cardigan, the returned lighter, the text that says just, you okay?

sometimes i think the deepest bonds are built not on intensity but on pattern. the repeated, the known, the small.

and not all rituals are nostalgic. some are stitched in real time — newer threads being added without fanfare:

i send her a photo of the sky when it looks like the sea.
he leaves voice notes where the silence between words says more than the words.
they always say “get home safe,” and it sounds like “don’t disappear.”

maybe the loudest proof we’re understood is in the quietest things.

if you’re reading this and thinking of your own shared rituals —
send the text.
share the song.
put the kettle on.

quiet doesn’t mean unspoken.

there’s something about holding a thing in your hand.
a weight, however small, that says: this happened. this mattered.

i’ve been thinking lately about tapes. not metaphorically, just… literally. the cassette i kept rewinding in ‘98 because track 7 reminded me of a boy who never liked me back. the way it clicked, hissed, rewound like it was catching its breath. the mix i made when my friend’s mum died — everything soft and wordless i could find, ferried across town in a cracked jewel case.

same with VHS. birthdays recorded over soap operas. family holidays blurred at the edges. the way your dad’s voice sounds on tape — younger, uncertain, laughing at something you’ve long since forgotten. watching it back now feels like time reaching both ways at once. like memory bending. like grief disguised as grain.

there’s a texture to these things.
not just physically — though yes, the clunk of a tape deck, the ridges of a polaroid, the scratch of needle meeting vinyl — but emotionally. a kind of analogue ache.

you can’t skip ahead.
you have to listen in order.
you have to wait.

and that waiting does something.
slows the blood. makes space. allows feeling to arrive whole instead of cut into pieces.

in contrast, digital things feel slick, instant, immaterial. they’re everywhere and nowhere. photos stored in clouds. playlists that evaporate when a server crashes. our lives increasingly made of files we’ll never touch.

and yet, the box under my bed still holds a mixtape from someone who once knew me best. a printed photo where we’re all squinting in the sun. a letter i never replied to but read at least ten times.

these aren’t just objects. they’re containers.
of time. of longing. of something more tender than nostalgia.

maybe it’s about loss.
or maybe it’s about the refusal to forget.

either way, analog keeps asking something of us:
to remember slowly.
to hold things carefully.
to let them be a little broken, a little worn, and still — worth keeping.

I must’ve been about nine. That loose, liminal age where your sense of self is still made of borrowed scraps — the way your mum parts her hair, the songs your older cousin plays in the car, the smell of someone else's house that you think might be better than yours. I was wearing a jumper too big for me and shoes that squeaked on the assembly hall floor. It was a Thursday, which meant recorder practice, custard, and the boy with the chipped front tooth.

He was cool in the effortless way of kids who don’t try. I, meanwhile, tried so hard I nearly tipped over with it. I remember clutching The Secret Garden, trying to look like I understood the sadness of it all. I remember drawing a crow in blue biro on my pencil case. I remember laughing — too loud — when he said something vaguely funny, because I wanted to be seen. Not liked, necessarily. Just noticed. Just enough to change the temperature of the room when I walked in.

That was the first time I remember wanting to impress someone. Not because I wanted them to love me. I didn’t even know what that meant yet. But because I wanted to be something. Interesting. Strange, but in a curated way. Worth the space I took up.

Of course, he barely looked my way. Of course, I pretended I didn’t care. But that flicker — of trying to be shinier, cleverer, a little more like someone he'd remember — has never really left me. It’s just evolved: into mixes burned at midnight, book recommendations too carefully chosen, eyeliner sharp enough to wound.

Funny how a moment that small can echo for years.

 They say you never forget your first heartbreak — mine came with a horn section and a deceptively cheerful chorus.

The Beautiful South taught me early that melancholy wears many disguises: a chipper piano line, a baritone muttering something brutal, a chorus you’ll hum in the supermarket and cry about in the car. No band was ever so polite about devastation. “Don’t Marry Her” is a hymn for bitter hope, “Prettiest Eyes” a love song that remembers time isn’t kind, and “Rotterdam” — well, that one just knows.

And then there’s Phil Collins.

Phil, patron saint of the emotionally inconvenient. His voice lives somewhere between a sigh and a plea, and I believed every word even before I understood what they meant. “Against All Odds” is a thunderstorm in slow motion. “Take Me Home” feels like walking alone in a city lit by sodium streetlamps. And “In the Air Tonight”? That’s a song you survive.

These are the artists who made it okay to feel too much, too often. Who said, yes, it’s absurd to be so wounded by ordinary life — but here’s a melody for that. Here’s a drum break that will make your chest cave in. Here’s a line you’ll repeat until it stops hurting, or until it does again.

So this is my love letter: to the unpretentious poetry of pop, to the way sadness sneaks into our softest places via FM radio, to songs that sound like walking home in the rain with your hands in your pockets. To The Beautiful South. To Phil Collins. To every moment that needed their voices.

You helped me name it. You helped me carry it. You helped me dance anyway.