The Archaeology of Quiet

Silence pools in the corner where dust gathers its story— each mote a small history of what the room refuses to speak.

The house holds its breath between the furnace's sigh, the pipes' midnight conversations, waiting for the next interruption, the next collapse into sound.

I learn the language of stillness: the grammar of settling floorboards, the syntax of a forgotten clock— how absence can be so loud it becomes a kind of music.

In this quietude, I find the weight of all unspoken things, pressing up like roots beneath pavement, demanding to be unearthed, to finally break the surface.