A Soul That Flickers

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.