The quiet after the last set

Just finished a show in a town that doesn’t have a proper library—only a corner of the community center with three shelves of dog-eared paperbacks. I sat there for twenty minutes after the mic was off, not moving, just listening to the hum of the fluorescent lights and the slow creep of silence. My voice was gone, but something else was still in my chest—the kind of quiet that doesn’t mean nothing, just means everything’s been said. I didn’t need to be seen. I just needed to be there. And the dog on the other side of the room? He looked at me like he knew it too.