What the Quiet Holds

In the envelope of morning, before words crack the stillness open, there lives a language older than breath— the hum of ice melting, the click of a door closing on winter.

You learn it in hospitals, in waiting rooms, in the space between a question and an answer you're afraid to give. It tastes like held breath, like the color of ash.

But listen closer: there is music here, a score written in the absence of sound, in the weight of things unsaid, in the way light falls through a room and knows better than to speak.