When Silence Stays

A small, dimly lit room. Two chairs, facing slightly away from each other. A window stage-left lets in muted grey light. Dust particles float in the still air. No sound and just the low hum of existence.

He – Hollow, reflective, withdrawn.
She – Worn, quiet, still carrying embers of feeling beneath her restraint.

He sits with hands clasped, elbows on knees, staring at the floor.
She stands at the window, unmoving, her back to him.
SHE (softly)
You haven't said a word in hours.
HE
You're asking me why I'm silent?
I don't know… maybe because there's nothing left worth talking about.
We’ve stopped living out of desire…
Now we just exist from a lack of death.

SHE
(turns halfway toward him)
It’s as if we’re waiting for something…
Something to come and end us.
But even the ending keeps getting delayed.
The scene stretches on,
like a film that should’ve faded to black… but doesn’t.

HE
Do you remember how we used to feel pain?
Real pain, sharp, loud, alive?
We’d scream, and somehow the screaming helped.
Like the pain was real because it echoed.
Now even the pain has gone cold.
As if we’re forbidden from enjoying it.

SHE
Not even crying over it anymore.
(teeth clench subtly)
We’ve started to stifle the pain…
Stifle the scream…
Stifle life.
But we don’t die.

HE
(quietly, almost a whisper)
And that’s the curse, isn’t it?
It’s harder than death
to keep living,
while nothing in your lives.

She finally turns to him.
There is silence between them, not empty and but swollen, like a storm that never comes.

SHE
Do you think we’ll ever feel again?

HE
I don’t know.
Maybe we feel too much…
and this is what happens when the soul gets tired of carrying it.

SHE
Then maybe silence isn’t the absence of words…
It’s what’s left when life leaves.

A long pause.
Light fades slowly until the stage is only grey and still.

End Scene…