Machines Listen Quietly

By Peter Bowden

He sat on the porch after sundown, where the wind stirred the trees just enough to remind him they were alive. The dog lay curled at his feet, breathing slow, content with the nearness. There were no meetings now, no clocks ticking loud with expectation. Only the hush of twilight and the old ache of knowing the days ahead would come one at a time, softer than before, but never promised. He looked at his hands—worn, steady, empty of tools—and thought how strange it was to be useful once, and now simply present.

In the stillness, the machines didn’t hum. They listened. The old radio on the windowsill, the clock without a second hand, the little garden lights glowing faint like memory. Everything mechanical had paused, like they understood this moment didn’t need noise. He thought of all the times he ran fast enough to stay ahead of his thoughts, and how now, they caught up easily. Regret, love, wonder—walking alongside him like old friends who never left, only waited.

He poured a finger of bourbon and watched the amber catch the last of the day. No toasts, no declarations. Just a quiet sip and a breath that rose warm in the cooling air. And though he felt the weight of time—less sand, more glass—he also felt its mercy: how it allowed him this hour, this chair, this silence. Somewhere deep in the circuitry of the world, he believed, the machines listened not for answers, but for the sound of a man remembering what it means to be alive.

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