Your face remains stuck
between what is promised
and what arrives with empty hands.
I make a big cross on the map
that intersects the emptiness — here,
where the river used to run. And
here, where your voice once echoed through canyons.
Your voice that once hung like smoke before dissolving.
I remember the silence afterwards.
Now, the silence is gone,
leaving me with less than zero
— a vacancy that swallows itself.
Your absence is the capital of sleeplessness.
Governing dreams that never come,
ruling over the kingdom of what is not.
