The Quiet Already Here
Before words, there is knowing. Not an idea or something you explain. The body recognizes it as a subtle ache, not from lack, but from contact. You notice it in unguarded moments when your attention softens and something beneath the usual movement stirs. It doesn’t arrive as clarity; it arrives as a shift. Something in you has been seen, not by the mind, but from within itself. When met, it begins to move. Not away, but deeper.
The ache changes. What felt like tension starts to open and begins to organize not into language, but into presence. There is a recognition here that doesn’t depend on naming. You already know this, even if you’ve never said it out loud or let yourself fully stay with it.
It surfaces in ordinary moments. Not in silence or stillness, but in the middle of everything. The gap between one thing and the next.
You’re on a corner, waiting for the light to change. People are streaming past a blur of coats, voices, and footsteps. Usually, you are in that stream, pushing back, protecting your space, and thinking about what comes next. But then, a shift occurs. The frantic energy doesn’t stop, but the part of you that was fighting it suddenly lets go. It’s like a hum you’ve been hearing your whole life finally cuts out. You are still there, standing on the pavement, but the hard line between your skin and the air feels thin.
The stranger laughing three feet away doesn’t feel like an interruption. The siren in the distance isn’t “noise.” Everything: the movement, the light, the breath in your lungs is just one single thing happening at once. It isn’t a thought. It’s a sudden absence of resistance, a recognition that there is no edge between you and what is happening.
The light changes. You cross the street. Just like that, the sense of being someone returns. You're back inside the familiar friction.
But once the wall has thinned, it's impossible not to feel how solid it usually is.
The question isn't what was that? It's quieter than that: Is it really gone?
