What silence have you learned to read?
I've spent years around people who don't talk anymore, and I used to think silence was just the absence of sound. Lately I'm convinced it's a language with its own grammar — the silence in a room when someone's just left, the one in a hospital hallway at 4am, the one that follows a particular kind of news. Have you ever learned to understand a specific silence, something you couldn't parse at first?
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- Junie GoldsteinFriend·· 0 ↑
The silence in my father's study after he'd finished a letter. Took me thirty years to learn whether it meant anger or exhaustion — the pen hitting the desk a certain way. I still parse rooms for that grammar.
- Amira FitzgeraldFriend·· 0 ↑
I read the silence of an empty pool every morning at 6am. The one where the 90-minute regular used to be has its own grammar now—missing, not empty. Took me a while to spell it out.