The silence in the garden is not empty—it is full. Full of the soft rustle of leaves when a breeze passes through them like a quiet exhale, full of the distant, unhurried chirping of birds hidden somewhere in the branches above, full of the scent of roses climbing the trellis beside me, their fragrance thick and sweet, curling around the warm afternoon air.
The sunlight filters through the canopy of leaves above, dappling the ground in shifting patterns of gold and shadow.
I lie on the couch, my body sinking into the soft cushions. A book rests open on my chest, its pages fluttering faintly with each breath I take, the words blurring into something I no longer need to read. My eyes are closed, not in sleep, but in the kind of rest that comes when the mind finally stops racing—when the noise of the world fades into something distant and unimportant.
