We are hollow—
not vessels, not bottles under the tap--
Not empty-to-be-filled;
we’re empty-to-be-empty;
those shriveled dried egg pods

you find on the beach,
never meant to hold more
than the potential for a full-grown skate.
Souls were there once, but they died
quickly after we emerged from our casings.

You aren’t sad—
you’re hollow, and I do not infuse
your shell with the warmness I
feel for you, a shell topped off with empty,
any more than a dry cup

can love itself to fullness.  
My fat arms will never be able
to trade their misplaced heat with you;
How hilarious to picture empty eggshells
walking around town, watching tv,

driving to work or, most ridiculously, feeling,
or attempting to mesh their bodies together.
How laughable, you hollow thing, to think that
our egg-thin forms could warmly interlock.
Why, you’d crack in half—you’d splinter—

and not yolk, no no, nothing so concrete, but
merely the memory of yolk would spill
out, ooze out,

get under my dry crevices, and make
my aridness
a lie.