Hollow Echo

Walls remember laughter as a scar remembers pain–a hollow space that mocks the urge to fill,
Time gnaws the corners of a life until even silence aches, a hunger that refuses any thrill,
Photographs fade to gray, the colors stolen by a thousand dawns that never brought relief,
The ghost of joy is brittle now, a note that cracked and snapped beneath the weight of grief.
A bed unshared, its sheets unwrinkled, echo every absence louder than the day before,
Objects clutter shelves, pretending meaning, though the only pulse is the closing of a door.
Love is what it leaves behind, not the heat of skin or the promise of return,
But the way a room can empty itself of comfort, how a name can teach a throat to burn.

Nothing left to trace but air–memories as thin as cigarette smoke in the dark,
No thread to mend the gaping seams, no words that ever leave a mark.
Even longing becomes a ritual, a muscle memory learned and lost,
Touch is theory, not event–another warmth outgrown or crossed.
A body drifts through habit, echoing a song forgotten by its tongue,
Each day an echo, hollower, never young.
Laughter, once the proof of living, now is shadow–faint and sharp,
The world insists on morning, but the heart is tuned for dark.
Somewhere, the echo of a name still stings the air,
Unanswered, unanswerable–too numb to care.