What Your Voice Promised

The morning you stopped speaking, I watched you fold laundry with the precision of someone who had decided something. Each shirt became a prayer, each towel a small goodbye— your hands folding away the breath of silence. In the kitchen, you point to the sugar bowl when you want sweetness. Your finger weaves circles in the air when you mean *again*. But your eyes still carry the weight of my name, and when you smile, I remember the sound you used to make before breakfast— that small hum of someone who knew words could be held like warm bread in cupped palms. Last night you wrote on the back of an envelope: *I am learning to listen to what silence keeps.* This morning, for the first time in weeks, you opened your mouth and let out one word: *Stay.* It hung between us like spring's first bird— fragile, certain, finally heard.