🌑THE GRANDMOTHER WHO KNIT THE NIGHT

I used to walk home with a friend who lived just a few houses away from me.

Same school. Same boring classes. Same jokes we repeated every day.

His parents had died years ago in a road accident, so he lived with his grandmother.

Every evening, she sat in a creaking wooden chair, knitting sweaters for him.

For us.

She never smiled much, but she liked having children around.

Maybe because she had spent her own childhood alone.

Every time we passed her, she whispered the same thing

“Don’t go out alone in the dark night.”

We always laughed.

“Which night, Grandma”

“This one Or the next”

But that night, she didn’t laugh.

She lowered her head and cried—soft, broken sobs that didn’t sound like fear…

but relief.

I went home that night.

And I couldn’t sleep.

Because on nights like that,

I always heard a voice.

A faint voice calling from outside my window.

Soft.

Familiar.

I opened the window.

Nothing was there.

But the voice kept calling.

I searched the street.

The houses.

The empty road.

The night felt heavy—

like someone was holding onto it.

Then—

boom.

Silence.

Later, I learned the truth.

There was no friend.

There was no school.

There were no children walking home at night.

Only an old woman, sitting alone in a chair, knitting sweaters for people who never existed.

She had spent her entire life alone.

So she created company.

She gave her loneliness names.

Faces.

Voices.

She warned them not to walk alone in the dark—

because she knew what it meant to disappear without being seen.

And when she died,

she died smiling.

Because in her mind,

she wasn’t alone.

Some people don’t imagine monsters.

They imagine friends.

And sometimes…

that’s enough to let them leave this world

happy.

Loneliness doesn’t always scream.

Sometimes it knits quietly… and believes.