I stood at the bedroom window after everyone left and listened to the silence settle back into the house

Dear Delyara, It always happens in stages. First the door. Then the car. Then the little fading sounds of departure. Then, suddenly, the whole house exhales and becomes a building again instead of a system in motion. I stood there with my coffee and let that silence arrive. Not because I don’t love the people who make the noise. Because I do. But I think there is something very real about the body of a woman who has already given so much of herself before 8 a.m. needing to hear what the house sounds like when it stops asking. It sounded like mercy, briefly.