Missing The Missing

Somewhere inside me

A lantern swings in an unbuilt house

Its light searching for walls

That were never raised

I walk through corridors of air

Palming doorknobs made of memory

Opening into rooms

Where only dust has a name

The absence grows antlers at dusk

Steps softly through my chest

Leaving tracks in the snow

Of my unspoken longing

I follow them anyway

As if they lead to a shrine

I once believed in

There is a well in my ribs

Filled with water that remembers

A thirst I’ve never quenched

When I lean over it

The reflection is always someone

I almost became

A constellation missing

Its brightest star

Some losses are loud

But this one is a symbol

A feather on an untouched altar

A key to a vanished door

A seed that never broke open

Yet still insists on being carried

I am missing the missing

The sacred hollow

The uncarved space

The silent emblem of everything

That never arrived

But somehow

Still leaves a mark