The silence that followed his last words did not feel like a pause between questions and answers, but rather like the moment when something unspoken began to take shape beneath everything that had already been said.
It was not empty, and it was not uncertain; it carried a kind of weight that made speaking too quickly feel like a mistake, as though the wrong word might close a door I had only just begun to see.
I did not respond immediately, not because I had nothing to say, but because I was beginning to understand that this was not a conversation I could rush.
The man in front of us did not offer answers in the way I was used to receiving them. He did not simplify, did not guide, did not even correct in a way that felt direct. Instead, he shifted the ground beneath each question until the answer revealed itself whether I was ready for it or not.
Still, there was a point where silence stopped being useful.
