Even on the best days,
there’s something missing.

I can laugh.
I can win.
I can build the kind of life
that looks like everything I wanted
but when the day ends
and the noise dies down,
I still feel it.

That hollow echo
where something sacred used to sit.

I don’t say it out loud.
Most people wouldn’t understand
how you can have everything
and still feel like
you lost the only thing that mattered.

It’s not a name.
Not a title.
It’s the quiet certainty
that something real
once lived here.
And nothing since
has fit the same way.

Some mornings,
there’s a dream
warm,
soft-edged,
familiar.
And for a few stolen seconds,
the world makes sense again.
There’s peace.
A laugh I’d trade everything to hear.
A presence that makes the air feel right.

I wake up smiling.

Then I remember.
This is not that world.

And no matter how far I go,
how much I carry,
there’s a room in me
that never closed its door.

Still furnished.
Still lit.
Still waiting
in the quiet.

Because no matter how much joy
the world offers me
it never brings
what I miss most.