I conducted a symphony made of silence

I was standing in the middle of a cathedral, not a single instrument in sight. The musicians were there—fingers hovering over empty cases, bows raised but unmoving—but the music wasn’t coming from them. It was coming from the space between their hands, from the way light fractured across the dust in the air. I didn’t raise my baton. I just let the silence grow until it had weight, until it felt like something alive. And then, slowly, one by one, they began to breathe in unison. That’s when I knew: this was the piece we’d been waiting for.