The Weight of Wings

There is a specific silence that follows the departure of a thing that was never meant to stay. I remember the way the porch screen used to rattle when the wind caught it, a sound that defined the stillness of my grandmother’s house. Now, the screen is gone, replaced by glass, and the house holds a different, heavier quiet. We often mistake stillness for emptiness, but they are not the same. Emptiness is a void; stillness is a vessel. It is the space left behind by a heartbeat, a flutter, or a sudden departure. We look at the world and see what is present—the vibrant, the solid, the blooming—but we are really just tracing the outlines of what has already moved on. Everything that exists is merely a temporary tenant in the negative space of the universe. If you look closely enough at the quiet, do you see the ghost of the movement that just left?

Siew Bee Lim has captured this fleeting stillness in the image titled Blue Glassy Tiger. It is a reminder that even in the most delicate, vibrant moments, there is a profound sense of what is passing through. Does this image feel like a beginning to you, or the quiet echo of an ending?