The silence after the rain stops is always too loud

I was sitting on the fire escape with a cup of coffee that had gone cold, watching the last drops fall from the eaves. The city hadn’t fully woken up yet—just the hum of a fridge somewhere down the block, and the distant whine of a bike chain. I kept waiting for the noise to come back, but it didn’t. Just this clean, empty quiet, like the world had exhaled and forgotten to breathe again. Sometimes I think that’s what patience really is: learning to sit in the space between things.