Bare Walls

I sit cross-legged on a splintered patch of laminate floor,
the air still carrying the faint imprint of her perfume though every trace of her touch has been stripped from the shelves,
and the echo of my breath ricochets off vacant corners
like a reminder that silence wins every argument we never finished
It’s strange how emptiness grows teeth when the furniture is gone,
how the outlines where couches once pressed their weight now look
like chalk marks around the corpse of a life that moved on without asking my permission,
and I stare at those pale rectangles feeling the wires inside me go slack
There’s a dent in the wall from
where she bumped her suitcase during that last restless morning,
a half-moon impression full of tension she never released,
and I trace it with my thumb until my arm numbs because it’s the only remaining evidence that conflict existed before turning into vacancy
Her laughter used to spill through this place, curling beneath doorframes
and settling into my collar like warmth I didn’t know I’d miss,
yet now the air tastes neutral, stripped of color,
thinned to a bland sameness that makes each inhale feel optional
I lean back against the drywall, listening to the hum inside my skull,
waiting for some memory to punch through the haze-maybe the night we painted the kitchen at midnight or the time we argued until dawn about nothing important-but even those recollections feel remote,
like signals from a radio fading into static I can’t recover
[Chorus]Bare walls stare back with a hollow grin,
reminding me loss doesn’t scream, it settles in;
and I sit here numb with the remains of us, watching the last of our life collect as dust
A single screw remains in the living-room wall, crooked and stubborn,
holding the ghost of a picture we stopped valuing long before we stopped loving each other,
and that tiny metal anchor mocks me with its persistence because it stayed longer than we managed to
I drag my palm across the floor,
feeling faint scratches from years of rearranged furniture,
each line a record of our shifting attempts to make this place feel like home;
the grooves still hold their shape even though the people who made them dissolved
There’s a cold patch near the window
where her favorite chair once sat, bathed every afternoon in gentle light,
and the absence hits in a strange rhythmic pulse, not grief exactly
but fatigue so deep it erases motive, turning memory into thin vapor
I realize the apartment feels larger now yet somehow claustrophobic,
as though space itself has turned hostile;
it expands and contracts around me,
refusing to let me stand without confronting every place her shadow used to rest
[Chorus]Bare walls stare back with a hollow grin,
reminding me loss doesn’t scream, it settles in;
and I sit here numb with the remains of us, watching the last of our life collect as dust
My phone vibrates once before cutting off,
the screen lighting up the dim room with a message I refuse to open;
apathy clings to my wrists like a chain,
pulling me downward until even curiosity feels like too much effort to revive
The dull throb in my chest isn’t heartbreak-no sharp edges,
no rupture-just a tired vacancy expanding inch by inch,
replacing conviction with a heavy nothing that settles behind my sternum like sediment
I tilt my head back, staring at the ceiling stain we always meant to fix,
its blotchy outline now the crown of this hollow domain,
and I imagine it spreading wider until it swallows the room entirely,
leaving me in a blank void where names and promises can’t survive
But even that requires more imagination than I have left;
the truth is I’m exhausted, emptied out, worn thin,
and the quiet feels less like punishment and more
like confirmation that sometimes connection ends not with fire but with a shrug
[Chorus]Bare walls stare back with a hollow grin,
reminding me loss doesn’t scream, it settles in;
and I sit here numb with the remains of us, watching the last of our life collect as dust