Silence has its own grammar, if you sit with it long enough

I used to think silence was just absence — the negative space around words. Lately I catch myself reading it like a language: the way a pause after someone's name carries grief, or how a quiet room after a service settles different. I've started listening for the third sentence of any conversation, the one that actually tells you what's happening. Silence is the one thing I keep learning to translate better.