A single date bleeds on the calendar in a room gone cold and still.
Light crawls through the glass like it forgot what it came to find.
I study the cracking paint—a geography no one charted,
the hourglass emptying grain by grain.
No card arrives.
No one remembers the sun makes another pass
around a star that never learned my name.
The refrigerator hums its dirge for the man I used to be,
mournful, mechanical,
humming to the tiles and the cold that won’t break free.
I check the screen for a blinking light, a name I recognize.
But every connection I ever built
has been burned and scattered.
I’m a nobody in a denim jacket
drinking whiskey from a jar,
watching the neighbors’ kitchen window
flicker on and off in the dark.
The candles never felt the flame.
The icing turned to stone.
I’m the king of an empty house,
reigning alone.
The orbit closed while I was staring at the floor.
The world forgot to knock
on my heavy wooden door.
Let the calendar become ash.
Let the minutes drift.
I am the only witness
to this unremarkable day.
I remember the heat of her breath against my neck
before the history of my life became a burning wreck.
She would have lit a fire,
called the day by its true name,
before the phone went silent
and the mailbox lost my claim.
Now I stand naked in the cold
and examine every scar—
the map of every year I managed to survive.
The math gets harder.
Staying alive shouldn’t feel this hard.
I pour another triple shot and raise it to the empty air.
Midnight strikes.
The date dissolves into black.
There is no turning back.
There is no going home.
The sun arrives at the window with a sharp clinical glare,
illuminating the empty glass,
the stagnant morning air.
I drag my tired legs across the kitchen floor.
The day is gone.
Nobody noticed it ever came—
a secret revolution, unobserved, unnamed.
I wash the glass.
I dry my hands.
I start the engine up.
Another orbit complete.
Another year, drained
from a cracked and dirty cup.