The Pause Between

Between the exhale and the next breath, a landscape settles—fog lifts from the valley's mouth like a secret finally spoken aloud.

The trees hold their leaves as if they might scatter them differently this time, if given another chance. A bird lands on an empty wire.

Everything waiting. Everything still. The light turns copper where it touches the water, and for a moment we understand what silence means— not absence, but presence so complete it has forgotten how to speak.