The water that leaves at low tide doesn’t vanish. It’s just somewhere else for a while. Friendships can work like that.

A friendship going quiet is not always a friendship ending. People get pulled into a season with no room in it, a sport, a job, something at home, and the closeness goes elsewhere for a while without being destroyed. The hard part is that absence and rejection feel identical from the inside, and you often cannot tell which one you are in until later.

Rather than deciding what it means, send the low-effort message: a photo, a joke, something that needs no reply. Leave the door open without standing in it. Notice who comes back when their water rises, because that is worth knowing.