You are lying in bed next to your partner. The room is quiet. Maybe you just had an argument about something small, or maybe nothing happened at all, and that is the problem. You pick up your phone because that is what people do now when they do not know what else to do with their hands. And within thirty seconds you are watching a couple on Instagram slow dance in a kitchen at golden hour, the caption something about choosing each other every single day, and suddenly the silence next to you feels like a verdict.

There is a specific kind of silence that only happens when you are somewhere wild with someone you love. Not the silence of two people who have run out of things to say. Not the silence of a room where something went unsaid and now sits between you like furniture. This is the other kind. The kind where both of you are looking at the same horizon and neither of you needs to speak because the moment is already full.