The Aching Quiet

The aching quiet.

You’d know it, I’m sure.

The moment something could have been said but wasn’t. The moment silence was filled with a smile, a giggle, a tear.

That’s what I think the aching quiet is.

An ache of the highest happy.

An ache of the deepest sad.

I’ve met the aching quiet many times in my life.

It’s the glance between would-be lovers in a crowded room; The bashful smiles that live with them for days and weeks and months.

It’s Dad, at the game, when his little girl socks the ball a mile; It’s the face in left-field, who never saw that coming.

It’s the woman who discovers the burger guy’s name and number on her chip bag; It’s how high he flips the patty when she sees it there and smiles.

If words are what life sounds like… the aching quiet must be how life feels.

The stuff of life that reaches the very bones of us, the yarn that weaves us together and makes us all the same.

The aching quiet, I think, is the pauses between the words. The deeper meaning of what we say.

It might even be a gooey caramel surprise for some. (Uhem, me.)

Yes.

I really do love the aching quiet.

Don’t you?