Empty Eyes
There’s a face I used to love, mapped in memory’s desperate relief,
Eyes that once blazed with hunger now emptied of promise, emptied of grief.
We used to set each other on fire, burning away the days,
Now we sit in silence, an endless absence, nothing left to praise.
Your eyes are vacant, hollowed out by time,
The place where love was stored is gone, a sunken crime.
You look at me, but you don’t see–
I am invisible, erased by whatever darkness you won’t name,
And in your empty eyes, I lose the will to reclaim
The warmth we murdered by refusing to try,
The hope we strangled with every cold goodbye.
I remember the nights we shook with want,
The secrets told in shadow, the shiver of skin,
Now there’s a gulf between us wider than any sin.
I reach for your hand–my own comes back cold,
The spark we chased is spent, our history sold
For one more night pretending we still belong,
While your eyes refuse every apology,
Every desperate song.
You’re a stranger now, your voice a foreign tongue,
We drift through the wreckage of our shared past,
Too numb to fight, too tired to run.
Love became a ghost that starved in our bed,
I watch your mouth move, but nothing you said
Can resurrect the fire,
You are a shell, and I am a shadow–
No light left to inspire.
I scream for you, beg for the old ache,
But you don’t flinch, don’t even fake
A reaction–
Just the chill of indifference,
A silence that infects everything we touch,
A death by fractions.
How did we lose it? Was it boredom, was it fear?
Was it the slow build of anger, or the quick slip of a tear?
I don’t know, and now I never will,
Your empty eyes are proof–love can disappear,
Even when you want to keep it still.
I wander the house alone even when you’re near,
Searching for the echo of laughter, the sound of your care.
I want to shatter the numbness, to make you bleed,
But all I find is a vacuum, a space where you used to be,
And in those eyes, a blank refusal–no regret, no need.
We lost our glow somewhere in the dark,
I can’t revive it, can’t even start
To remember what hope felt like.
You’re a stranger now, cold and gray,
And I mourn the love you won’t return–
I stare at your empty eyes every day,
Knowing I’m the one who still burns.