The afternoon trickles,
dripping into the room.
Dust motes waltz
in strips of somber light.
Dresses hang in neat rows—
vibrant: blue, red, yellow—
but they are useless.
Nowhere to go,
no one to visit.
Cobwebs thread
the fan blades,
swaying with a faint rhythm.
Distant traffic
pricks the silence.
Even the light is alone.
It whispers:
Help.
I can\'t know if you breathe right now.
I can\'t hear your laughter this far away.
I love you—
therefore you have the power to hurt me.
This pain is a house no one else can enter,
its rooms locked,
its windows refusing light.
I wander it alone,
touching the walls as if they might answer.
I yearn for you so desperately,
but there is no language by which to tell you—
only silence,
stretching like a hallway that never ends.
I try desperately to remember you.
Day by day, I am forgetting–
the sound of your voice,
how you\'d wrap your arms around me,
pulled me close
when my world was in shambles.
I do not stir
from the tomb of my bed.
Every object means nothing–
each one exists only for you.
But you are not here.
Silence is a blanket,
draped heavy on my shoulders.
Even the chairs
have lost their language.