Cluttered with Emptiness

Silence pours into the hall, a greeting
from this bright, curated cell.
Each object, a carefully placed memory.
A story with no one left to hear it.

In the closet, twelve years are stacked in boxes,
the entire weight of my thirties.
An investment that left me with ghosts
and good furniture.

No children’s laughter.
Just the hum of the fridge,
keeping the quiet company.

So I invite new clutter in.
The phone, a small, glowing god of maybes,
offers a hundred flickering faces.
Each match a tiny paper cut of hope,
each ghosted conversation a cup left on the counter,
another piece of beautiful junk
I don’t know where to put.

There’s a panic that rises in the quiet.
The ticking clock is in my chest now.
My friends are photographs in frames.
My family, a missed call I mean to return.

The body has its blunt demands,
the heart, its own separate famine—
two hungers warring in a single house.

The rooms are full. So full.
Everything is here
but me.