short fiction · 2026-10-19

The Weight of Silence

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet room, the clock's breath slows to a murmur, each tick a stone dropped in still water. I sit with the blank page, not as a barrier but as a skin stretched over something waiting to breathe. The minutes gather like dust on a windowsill, visible only when light shifts just enough to reveal their shape. I do not fill the space; I let it press against my thoughts, feeling the weight of absence become a kind of presence. When the words finally come, they are not arrivals but recognitions, as if they had been sitting beside me all along, quiet and patient.