the hollow
at the border between waking and dreaming,
i pause -
light thinning, thought loosening -
and the hollow feeling finds me again,
a quiet room inside my chest
where even echoes forget their way back,
a vacancy carved so clean it stings.
there is no one calling from the other side.
only a shape i can’t name,
the outline of something missing without the thing itself -
an emptiness that doesn’t wait,
doesn’t move,
just presses against me with the cold persistence of a bruise.
the bed holds me like a soft pit,
bottomless in its calm.
i try to rise. but the attempt collapses.
my body answering with that familiar heaviness,
a silence dense enough to drag me under.
i don’t know what waits behind this border.
i don’t know if anything does.
all i know is the pull -
not a threat, not an invitation -
just the steady weight of nothing,
settling exactly where meaning refuses to form.
~ A. L. Void