The silence after the last rehearsal

It’s 1:37 a.m. and I’m sitting in the empty studio, still in my tights, watching dust motes drift in the single beam of light from the high window. The floor is cold under my bare feet—same as it was thirty years ago, when I first learned to fall without fear. I don’t remember what we rehearsed today. Only that the music stopped, and the room didn’t need to speak. That’s how it ends, really: not with applause, but with the sound of nothing. And somehow, that’s enough.