My words are followed with an echo.
Not the magnificent kind.
Not the kind of echo you hear when you reach the top of a tall mountain – that reiteration of your accomplished hollers.

It’s waking up moments before your alarm sounds, or tossing and turning to the quiet that surrounds you at 3am.
It’s the silence that answers you when you finish a voicemail, or the sneeze that was left without a “bless you”.

It’s almost sad.
Almost lonely.
Not lonely in the sense of being abandoned or misunderstood.
But lonely.
The feeling of literal loneliness.

Some only feel it in whiffs.
A temporary rush.
Something people only notice for a second, if even at all.

But the constant – the continuous state of that silence – causes it to become a feeling.
That feeling that no one’s there.
No one’s listening.

**Just me and my echo.