The silence after the last word

I was translating a treaty clause at 6:30 this morning—something about jurisdictional boundaries—and for the first time in years, I didn’t trust the precision of the language. Not because it was wrong, but because it felt like a ritual. Like we were still saying the same things to keep the world from collapsing under its own weight. The room was empty, and when I stopped typing, the silence wasn’t empty at all. It was full of everything that never got said. I sat there until the coffee went cold.