When I stay at a friend’s place, the space between saying good night and good morning is an unfamiliar type of quiet. I think it’s because it’s not my own quiet that I feel in this space, but theirs. On the couch, or the air mattress, or in the guest room, in the dark, it feels like I am borrowing the ordinary quietness they feel every day. I am borrowing their sadnesses, their lonely and still moments, their pauses.
