Finding Beauty in Everything.

Awards:

Roy Peter Clarke Narrative Contest Overall Winner

Walt Whitman Writing Contest Winner

Chaminade AP Literature and Composition Contest Overall Winner 

Published in Skylight Literary Magazine

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January 3rd, 2024

The Silence Between Us

I do remember the night the power went out. It was toward the end of August, and the heat was trapped in the house, pressing up against the windows. It had rained very hard, and the roof cracked like it was going to split in two. Then, the lights went out.

 

We stayed in the living room—my father and I—in the quiet of the house as it shut down. The refrigerator no longer made its soft humming. The TV shut off mid-sentence. The only sound was the rain beating against the window, and for a long time, nobody said anything.

 

In those days, my dad and I lived in different worlds. He was working long hours, and I was busy living my life. Our conversations had become as brief as our exchanges—efficient, necessary, and both of us knew it.

 

"Do you need a ride?"

 

"I'm good."

 

"Dinner's in the fridge."

 

"Okay."

 

That night, the silence between us was different. I shifted in my chair, trying to see where the light ended and the shadow began. I wanted to talk about something—anything—but the words were stuck between my chest and my throat.

 

Then, without turning to me, he said, "Your grandfather enjoyed this kind of storm."

 

His voice was firm, but I heard the slight tenderness of something that was otherwise hidden. It was a small detail—a particular idea that opened a door to his memory.

 

"Really?"

 

He nodded and settled back into the couch. "He’d sit on the porch and watch the rain fall. He said it made him feel like a little man, in a good way."

 

I pictured it in my head: an elderly man on a veranda, the rain coming down in metallic streams, the world collapsing on him in every direction—a rung of a ladder stretching from the concrete to the infinite.

 

We stayed like that for a while—two shapes in the semidarkness, by the light of a candle—the space between us gradually growing smaller. He began telling stories I had never heard before, about his childhood in Queens and how he spent his summers fixing cars in his father’s garage. I listened, and each of those memories filled the gap where, earlier, there had been nothing but silence.

 

When the power was restored, something had shifted between us. The house still smelled like rain, and the fridge was back to making its usual, reassuring noise—a beat as reliable as a pulse.

"Want to play cards?" he asked, his voice in a better place.

 

I thought about saying no—the stubbornness of a teenager too absorbed in his own world. But instead, I shrugged. “Sure.”

That night, we played two games of gin rummy by candlelight, and I don’t even remember who won. What I do remember is how the silence between us had changed—not oppressive, but rich.

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Looking back, I know those stories were his way of attempting to span the chasm, using random occurrences to create a link where things had begun to fracture. It was a kind of storytelling without ever asking people to pick up a pen. Every story is made of those moments. The name of the dog. The rain on the porch. The dealing of the cards in the dark. They are the details that make people lean forward, listen hard, and perhaps—if they are very fortunate—connect the spaces inside of us.