A Poem a Day (156): Empty

Empty

A used-up sensation,

Faint echo of a mime

Too alive to be read.

Coursing on empty.

Yet nothing was stolen;

It was never really there.

An entirety swallowed up,

Despair inside the hollow

Bleak rendition of zero.

They hang their bitter heads,

Ashamed to feel nothing

But numbness, broken down.

An ode to misunderstanding,

A desire to be understood.

We hear the steel train

Rolling on its nothing tracks

And we quietly query

The end of the world.

There, it was never really.

Stolen, nothing was yet.

Where we once stood

The platform fills up again.

Bodies upright like stalks

Awaiting the final cut.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 26, 2020