I wish there wasn’t a void in me,
some endless hollow echoing louder at night.
I wish the hole was whole,
that whatever was torn away
had left enough behind to survive quietly.
I wish I wasn’t incomplete.
I wish I could wake up
without feeling like half a person
dragging the weight of the other half
through another empty morning.
Instead, I live day by day.
Minute by minute.
Breath after breath.
Going through motions so rehearsed
they almost look natural now.
I smile when I should.
Speak when expected.
Move like a machine programmed
to imitate living
while the soul inside it flickers low.
There was a time life meant something.
A time color stayed longer in the sky.
A time my chest held purpose
instead of absence.
There was a person
who made me stand for something.
Someone who could pull me from the dark
without even realizing they had.
Someone who made existing
feel less like surviving.
Now the silence stretches further.
Now the days blur together
like pages soaked in rain.
Now I walk through my own life
like a stranger passing through it.
And at the end of every night,
when the noise finally dies
and there’s nothing left to distract me,
I’m forced to face what remains.
Just one man.
Alone with the emptiness
where meaning used to live.