What We Talk About When We Talk About Silence

What We Talk About When We Talk About Silence

By Hasnain Shah

Silence is not the absence of words. It is the echo of them, unsaid, unsent, unresolved. I’ve learned this over years of listening to pauses in conversations with people I loved, pauses that carried more weight than any declaration could.

My father spoke in silences. Not in the way poets talk about silence, with romantic reverence, but in the way working men did when they returned home tired and resigned. He sat at the kitchen table with his mug of black coffee, newspaper folded but unread, staring into the distance. My mother would clatter pans louder than necessary, trying to make him notice her presence. I’d sit at the far end of the table, flipping through my homework, pretending not to notice that no one was speaking.

The house was thick with it—the silence of things never addressed, never admitted. We never said the word “unhappy,” though I could feel it humming beneath every meal. We never said “love,” either. Instead, it slipped in like steam, invisible but clinging.

I learned early that silence is a language. When my best friend in high school stopped answering my calls, she didn’t say, I don’t want to be your friend anymore. Her silence said it for her, more cruelly, more definitively. I would stare at the glowing screen of my phone at night, waiting for it to light up, waiting for her voice. It never did. Years later, when we met in a grocery store by accident, she smiled and said, “We just drifted, didn’t we?” as if silence had been a gentle ocean current, not a storm that ripped us apart.

Silence in love is another story. Lovers tell each other everything in the beginning—childhood memories, embarrassing secrets, petty dislikes. You talk until two in the morning, until words dissolve into laughter and yawns. But over time, silence creeps in, not the comfortable kind where you read in the same room together, but the silence that begins to bloom when something is wrong and no one wants to name it.

I remember a particular fight—though “fight” is too strong a word. We sat across from each other on the couch. He wanted to say something; I wanted him to say it. The air stretched taut like a string about to snap. Finally, he exhaled sharply, shook his head, and said, “Forget it.” That was the beginning of the end. Silence had already said what he couldn’t: I can’t do this anymore.

There are, of course, silences that save us. The silence of holding someone’s hand when they’re in pain, knowing words would only bruise the moment. The silence of listening—really listening—without rushing to fill the air with advice. The silence of waking up next to someone and simply being, before the machinery of the day starts grinding. These silences are a balm, a reminder that not everything needs to be said to be understood.

Still, I often wonder: how many relationships have I lost to silence? How many friends drifted because I didn’t send the message I meant to, how many family members remained strangers because I swallowed the words that might have bridged the gap?

The irony is that I am a writer. Words are my craft, my offering. Yet in my personal life, I find myself hoarding them, second-guessing whether speaking will heal or harm. So I stay quiet. And my quiet is often mistaken for indifference, when in truth it is the opposite: I feel too much to risk the wrong word.

When we talk about silence, we’re really talking about fear. Fear of rejection, fear of conflict, fear of vulnerability. But we’re also talking about trust—that rare kind where you know someone so well you don’t need words. Silence can be both wound and salve, prison and refuge.

I think back to my father at the kitchen table. If I could return there now, I would sit beside him in his silence, not across from it. I would put my hand on his calloused one, not needing him to speak. Maybe he would squeeze back, maybe not. Either way, I’d let the silence mean something different—connection instead of distance.

Because silence will always speak. The only question is: what will it say?