Some days the emptiness isn’t a mood, it’s a resident. It moves into my chest like it owns the place, sits on my ribs like a dog on a bone that won’t let go, clamps down like a snapping turtle that bites and refuses to release until the sky finally thunders

I miss everything

I miss my parents’ voices in the next room, the way a house could feel like a shelter and not just four walls. I miss the ordinary miracle of someone knowing how I take my coffee, which side of the bed is mine, which silence means “I’m tired” and which means “I’m hurting.”

I miss my children, their footsteps, their laughter, the way they played, acted and reacted. I miss having a home that smelled like coffee and Spruce or Fir, and something that meant yours

I miss my independence, the simple power of opening a door and stepping into a day that belonged to me. I miss what felt normal, because normal isn’t normal anymore

Out here, the wind keeps moving like nothing changed, but everything has. No matter how much I write, no matter how much I pray, no matter how much I talk, no matter how much I work, the emptiness is always there, waiting, watching, knowing all my tricks

Some days it hits like a wave, some days it lands like a stone in my stomach

I am lonely
I am empty

Yet still, for some reason, somehow, I am here, breathing through the ache, putting words to the hollow places because maybe just maybe someone else will read this and realize they are not the only one whose cistern has cracked, whose well has run dry, whose heart feels filled in with gravel and concrete

Maybe in the sharing, the loneliness loosens its grip, just a little. Maybe in the telling, the thunder comes, not to destroy, but to break the drought, to remind the ground that it can still hold water, that life can still rise again
Somehow