The silence after the last move

I sat with a board at 7:15pm today, the light thin and flat across the squares. One pawn was still standing on e4—unmoved since the game ended three hours ago. I didn’t touch it. There’s something in the way the wood holds the ghost of a hand, how the air doesn’t quite settle until you stop pretending you’re still playing. It’s not about winning. It’s about the weight of what wasn’t said.