Aries
...because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five
The silence from an old friend is not a riddle you need to solve. It is information about what this person wants from you right now, which is nothing. You keep checking your phone because you are treating the quiet as a problem that needs your attention, but some silences are just people choosing their own company over yours for a while. The part of you that wants to send the text anyway, to break through with the right words, is the part that cannot tell when you are wanted and when you are not. Birds keep singing after everything else stops, and that is enough.