The Grammar of Silence

Between your last word and mine, a space opens like a mouth refusing to speak.

The air holds its breath. Dust motes drift in slanted light, tiny planets circling nothing, and I understand at last why the desert is never empty.

Your hands lie still on the table— a map of all the places you haven't gone, all the things left unsaid gathering like snow in the folds of your palms.

I've learned the weight of words by their absence, how silence can be sharper than any blade, how listening is just another way of touching someone from across the room.

When you finally speak again, it will be to say nothing that hasn't already been said in the space between us, in the grammar of the unsaid, in the syntax of this breathing we do together.