The Weight of Absence
An ode to the silence of rooms
I.
In this room, the walls
lean in, heavy with their
sagging secrets. The window
cracks under the weight
of its own reflection,
a mirror I cannot trust.
The night outside, a bruise,
and I am here, swallowing the dark,
sipping it like wine, bitter and warm,
though nothing feels warm anymore,
only damp like the rain that seeps
through my skin, my bones
soaked in the long, gray forgetting.
II.
I trace the outline of my own body
on the bed, an echo, a hollow
where I once fit so neatly.
Now the sheets curl away,
reject me like they know I am
too full of absence, too emptied
of everything that made me whole.
The moon watches from its corner
of the sky, cold and distant
as ever. Its light brittle,
shatters on my floor,
dust I cannot sweep.
III.
Mother used to tell me stories
about women who disappeared,
not suddenly, but slowly,
piece by piece —
first the fingers, then the hair,
until all that was left
was a shadow
no one noticed was gone.
I feel it happening now,
this unraveling, this slow
dissolution into the air,
and I wonder how long
until there’s nothing left
but the memory of my breath
on the glass.
IV.
I have tried to root myself
in this earth, to grow
something from the ruins
of my body, but my hands
are clumsy with hope,
and every seed I plant
refuses the soil.
I have watered this life
with the salt of my tears,
but nothing blooms
from the salt. Nothing blooms
from me.
V.
The clocks here don’t tick;
they hum, a low, ceaseless drone
that fills the silence
with the sound of waiting.
I wait too —
for what, I don’t know,
only that something must come,
must break this cycle of waking
and not knowing why.
The days melt into each other
like candles left too long
in the sun, soft and useless.
I watch the wax drip,
wondering if it feels
the burn of its own collapse.
VI.
There is a mirror in the hall
that lies to me every day.
It says I am whole,
but I see the cracks,
the fine lines that spider
across my skin, marking
the places where I have fractured,
where the world has pressed
too hard, left its thumbprint
on my heart. I stare,
and the woman who stares back
is not me —
she is someone who smiles
at all the right moments,
laughs when she should,
but inside, there is nothing
but the vastness of empty rooms.
VII.
Sometimes, I think about leaving —
packing the bones of this life
into a suitcase, walking
until the city swallows me,
until the noise becomes louder
than the thoughts.
But even then, I know
I will carry this silence
with me, will fold it
into the seams of my skin
like a secret I cannot tell.
VIII.
What is real here?
The walls, the clocks,
the woman in the mirror?
Or is it the way the light
falls just so on the table,
turning the dust motes
into stars for just a moment,
before they settle back
into their stillness?
I reach out, touch the air,
and feel nothing,
only the weight of absence,
heavy and unrelenting.
IX.
There is no end to this room,
no beginning either —
just the endless turning
of time around me,
circling like a bird
with no place to land.
I close my eyes
and wait for the silence
to fill the spaces
where words once lived,
wait for the room
to forget me,
to let me slip
quietly into its folds.
X.
In the morning, I will rise,
and the sun will pretend
it didn’t see me break
in the night,
will shine as though
the world is whole
and I am still here,
untouched by the weight
of all I’ve lost.
But I know better —
I know the cracks
are still there,
that nothing mends
in the dark.
And the silence knows my name
better than I do.
