The Weight of Silence

Written for Sadje’s “What Do You See”.
Here’s where the photo prompt took me.

Brother Orrin swept the cloistered hall as sunlight pierced the latticed window, casting geometric shadows across ancient stone. Twenty years had passed since he’d last spoken aloud.

The silence had been terrifying at first …. a void where words once rushed to fill every thought. But gradually, he learned its language. The whisper of his broom against flagstones. The echo of footsteps in vaulted chambers. The patient breathing of walls that had witnessed centuries of unspoken prayers.

In the striped light, he paused. A younger monk appeared in the doorway, fresh from the outside world, eyes wide with the panic of enforced quiet. Brother Orrin met his gaze and smiled gently.

He understood. Silence wasn’t absence …. it was presence. In these hallowed corridors, stripped of speech, they discovered what words had always obscured: the profound communion of souls existing simply, quietly, together in an enduring light.

NAR©2026
#WDYS

This is “The Sound of Silence” by Disturbed

What do you see # 327- 9 February, 2026

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