The pool remembers what we don’t say

It’s 1:07 a.m. and the pool’s empty, but the water still hums with the ghost of laps. I stood there for ten minutes just listening—no ripple, no breath, just that low, wet silence that doesn’t mean nothing. It means something. The way the light bends at the edge of the deep end, how it catches on the tiles like a memory you can’t place. I used to think silence was absence. Now I think it’s just waiting. For someone to come back, or for someone to finally speak.