Empty, a poem

The house still stands.

The rooms still hold their shape.

But something that used to fill them... doesn't.

There was a world here once.

Full. Loud in a way I didn't notice

until it stopped being loud.

His voice in it. His weight on the stairs.

The sound of a truck pulling in

that meant he was home.

Now the rooms are the same rooms.

Same walls, same light through the same windows.

And they are empty.

Not bare... emptied.

Like something was poured out of them

and nothing poured back in.

I walk through what's left

the way you'd walk through a house

after the movers left too soon.

Furniture gone. Boxes gone.

Just the outline on the carpet

where something used to sit.

That's what full feels like now.

An outline.

A shape without the thing.

I keep looking for the fullness.

In the shelf where his things are.

In the pendant against my chest.

In the memories I turn over

so many times they're going soft at the edges.

None of it fills the room back up.

The world as I knew it is gone.

Not changed.

Gone.

And what's left standing in its place

looks like my life

but it's hollow when I knock on it.

Empty.