At the airport, as my eyes took in the words of a melancholy novel, I sat next to a couple that didn’t speak to each other during an entire meal. It wasn’t a hostile quiet, like two people deepening a divide between them, this was a softer quiet, like two people relishing in the idea that they had another to be quiet with. I never glanced directly at them but they must have become aware of my attention as their noiselessness quickly became palpable like a thick air hovering around them. Each movement they made: a grasp at a cup or the bite of a sandwich, seemed to occur with the utmost concentration and precision, as if quieting their actions would somehow make them more invisible when it fact it only made them more apparent. Their silence standing up against the noise of the world.