Being in a lift with someone is a very awkward experience. Nothing life-altering, or loved or dreaded. Simply awkward. My office is on the 7th floor and a guy I see everyday in the building but never have spoken to, was a fellow traveller today. The silence was damning and it got me thinking.

Is silence ever the same twice?

My conclusion is, no.

Because no two moments have the same hunger. Silence has multiple faces and colors.

There is the elevator silence. Metallic. Over-sanitized. It stares at its own shoes and counts seconds like rosary beads. It is too clean to be trusted, how you can never trust a stranger with too-white teeth. This silence comes not from a pretend etiquette, a mutual agreement by each party to disappear for seven or six floors.

Then there's silence that lives between lovers after an argument, sloppy like wet clay, too stubborn to hold a shape. It squats in the room with them, bruised and cross-legged, humming all the almost-said things.

The silence in forests is older though. Wiser. It doesn’t need your apology. It doesn’t beg to be broken. It is silence with lungs. With histories. It expands even when you’re not listening. If you stay long enough, it starts to sound like water learning the curve of the rocks.

City silence, is never truly mute. Even in its quietest hour, it pulses beneath the asphalt. Car alarms sobbing in the distance like scared lost children. The hum of unbothered appliances. City silence is a layered thing. There is grief stacked upon convenience, loneliness muffled by calculated, angular design. Even when everything stops, something still clicks in the wiring. The city, maybe, does not know how to die properly.

And then, the body silence. The one inside you. It comes not when the noise stops, but when you realize you’ve been speaking your entire life in the wrong frequency. This silence doesn’t echo at all.

What they don’t tell you is that silence isn’t quiet. Not always. Sometimes it roars. Sometimes it swells until it blots out a random language you didn't know you knew. Sometimes it walks into a room before you do. Other times, it waits until everyone leaves.