The weight of a stranger's living room

Just finished cleaning a place where someone had been dead for weeks. The dust on the bookshelf was layered like old snow. I kept finding little things—half-finished crossword puzzles, a mug with lipstick smudges, a sock folded just so. The silence in that house wasn’t empty. It was full of what didn’t get said. I wiped the coffee table and thought: no one will ever know how heavy this room was when they were still alive.