When I woke up this morning, I wasn’t aware that I heard silence first, before I heard second: the knife clanging against the inner glass walls of the almost-empty jelly jar. Up in the kitchen, my sister was getting ready for school.
I could still hear the silence, like the static channel on television turned down to low volume, in the space in between—the open door in the basement and the jelly jar being scraped for its remaining contents.