Do eyes forget, or do they just stay silent?

They say time changes everything. It erases faces, blurs voices, dims memories. One day, I might not even remember your face clearly. Your voice might stop echoing in my mind, your name might no longer make my heart tremble, your traces might fade… But do eyes forget? Or do they just stay silent?

Some people are carved into the soul with a single glance. No matter how hard you try to forget, every time you look into the mirror, you see the same absence staring back at you. Because some gazes are not just about seeing; they are about understanding. And once the eyes have truly seen someone, once they have let someone in, how do they unsee?

The heart can be deceived. It can be convinced with lies, reassured with distractions. The mind can be disciplined, taught to push away memories, to let go of the past. But the eyes… The eyes hold onto everything. The curve of a smile, the way light caught in their lashes, the silent language of stolen glances. The eyes know that no other gaze will ever hold the same warmth, the same depth. And so, they fall silent. But silence is not forgetting.

Sometimes, you are walking down a street, and you see a silhouette. Your heart stops. For just a second, you believe it’s them. You believe it so much that you forget to breathe. But when you turn your head, it’s a stranger. And that’s when you realise—your eyes are still searching. Time has passed; the days have blurred into years, yet your eyes still remember that one lost spring.

The eyes do not forget. They just stay silent. A song plays somewhere, and without a sound, your eyes bring back a memory. A scent drifts past, and suddenly, you are standing in a moment you thought you had left behind. Before someone even speaks their name, you already feel it—like the wind carrying the past straight into your bones. And you freeze, caught between time and longing.

Because some memories don’t speak. But eyes don’t need words to remember. A single glance carries a thousand moments. Even if your heart tries to forget, the weight of that gaze never really leaves.

Sometimes, you look away, thinking it will hurt less. But looking away is not forgetting. It is denying. And denial is the most painful way to remember. The things we avoid looking at are the things we know we can never erase. Like catching a glimpse of someone who looks like them in a crowd and feeling your heart leap before crashing into emptiness. Like smiling for a brief second before realising it’s not them and never will be.

The eyes don’t forget. Faces change, paths diverge, life unfolds in unexpected ways. But once upon a time, you looked into a pair of eyes that felt like home. And no matter how much time passes, a part of you will always search for them. Looking for traces of that gaze in different faces, echoes of their voice in other people’s laughter.

And the cruellest part? Believing you’ve truly moved on, only to run into them years later—unexpectedly, in some ordinary place. That one second where your eyes meet again, and everything you thought was over, everything you thought had faded, comes rushing back.

But the most painful part is not the memories. It’s the silence. The way your eyes, once full of unspoken conversations, now hesitate, now look away. Two people who once understood each other without words now barely hold each other’s gaze before looking down. Because sometimes, remembering hurts more than living.

We think we forget, but our eyes remind us. We think we have silenced them, but some nights, we wake up suddenly, realising we saw their eyes in a dream. And in that moment, we understand that the biggest lie we ever told ourselves was:

“I have forgotten.”

Because some gazes never fade.
Some loves return from the places time tried to bury them.
And some silences are the loudest screams.

With Love and Respect,

Burak Anaturk.

Burak Anaturk is a professional civil engineer. He focuses on sharing lessons from his life experiences, exploring diverse perspectives, and discussing personal development topics.
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