Silence After Speaking

The words scatter like startled birds, leaving only the shape of their departure— you trace the edge where sound dissolved.

In this widened space, you hear the cup cooling on the table, breath settling back into rhythm, the house remembering it was quiet first.

What lives in the gap between one voice and another? Not absence. Not emptiness. Something that was listening all along.

The silence doesn't erase what was said. It holds it differently— the way water holds light, translucent, patient, complete.