Nowhere to Fall

Emptiness is not a comfort, but a habit,
The body sleeps alone, the mind recites old scripts,
Every day is repetition, every night a theft,
The bed remembers hands that left.
He once craved a lover’s touch–now skin is foreign,
A country mapped by scars and lines and stories,
Each breath a pause between wanting and surrender,
Desire packed away with all the useless glories.

There is no bottom left to reach,
No abyss deep enough to cradle what’s been lost,
No more falling, just the stasis of defeat,
A pulse without a beat, a need without a cost.
Love is background noise, a television humming dead air in the other room,
No climax, no collapse, only the long slow bloom
Of numbness spreading through the house–
No more whispers, no more shouts,
Only the ghost of warmth, the chill of sleep,
He’s numb to love, to loss, to the pain that used to keep
Him tethered to the hope that life could change,
Now only the echo remains.