The hollow clatter,
fork to plate, rings—
a sound misplaced.
Empty halls devour voices
that once stood firm,
laughter now foreign
as wind to the walls.
Half the rooms sit cold,
chairs unfilled,
beds stripped,
the life leached from
this structure, bricks
crumbling to silence.
She has gone.
There’s no need to trace her
footsteps, no meaning in
the apology that dies
before the lips find it.
The children grown,
their worlds far beyond
the debris of ours.
The marriage that was—
its bones scattered,
its heart without pulse.
I sit, unmoving,
not as failure but as fact,
like the dying light in the window,
fading but sure in its exit.
And so what now?
There are no doors to knock on,
no pleading with fate
to stitch it back.
Let her live, let me live,
two parts once fused,
now simply apart.
In the quiet, I reconcile
with the self I left behind,
and though the house remains,
half empty,
the space feels mine at last,
and it’s enough.
