Silence Has Texture

Silence is not empty. It gathers in the corners where light bends away from looking, a congregation of held breaths, the weight of all the words we chose not to speak.

It settles on the folds of old leather, in the gaps between piano keys, a texture like grey velvet, patient as stone, waiting in the throat before the voice.

We walk through it without knowing— how it parts before us, reforms behind, how it carries the echoes of everything we cannot hear: the sound of growing, the sound of forgetting, the small collapse of certainty.

The silence after a name is called is different from the silence of winter. One waits for an answer. The other has already learned what it means to be still.