Empty streets, flickering lights
Not a soul in sight in the darkness of the night.
No fevered whispers, no drunken gait,
No flirty couples, no late-night deadlines.

The streets are devoid of life,
And yet you can't say it's dead.

People are living, breathing, sleeping,
under different roofs, in different rooms,
in varying states of ecstacy and misery and outright boredom.
In endless creativity and stuttering breaths,
witness the arousal and the ebb and flow of time
without so much as a second thought
to anyone outside the realm of safety and peace
within the four corners of their reality.

With each inhale, there is life.
Why can't we say that each exhale brings death?

For what is death if not simply as the absence of life?
When the glimmer in his eyes fades, when the smile you long for
doesn't appear, when you reach for his hand and find nothing but air--

Life.
It's empty.
Life.
It's meaningless.

I don't feel alive without you.
Yet I don't feel like I'm dead, either.

And so here I am, in a weird limbo that is just pain, pain, pain--
The pain of each inhale not bringing me what life is supposed to be
as described in picturesque scenes from tiny little windows.
The disappointment of every exhale that brings no end to this emptiness, this chasm of nothing in my chest that you once filled.

Empty streets, like veins that pump blood that refuse to sing.
Flickering lights, from my lighter that spouses one last, dying flame.
No fevered whispers, no drunken gait.
No love, no adrenaline.
Nothing.