Hollow
Doesn’t have to be a bad word
Hollow
Doesn’t have to mean “empty”
And “missing”

When I listen
It means there is a container
Wrapped tight
And taut in something warm
The hide of a once wild
and free animal
is now a fate reverberated
as another passionate, wild being
Strikes it
Sparks the potential aflame
Into a sprout of a heartbeat

Or it is
The fog
Once aimless and reaching
Until it finds a lighthouse
Its beam also reaching for it
So when light strikes the micro droplets
Each effervescent molecule
Is lit in the turn of the path
In each passing round
An orchestra plays

That is the word
“Hollow”
To me

It takes heat to open an oyster,
or a knife(or time).
Humans are enough like oysters, I suppose,
but they don’t need pain to bring out their full potential—
they do need time.
Time takes too long for some,
and pain is an easy alternative;
forgoing sleep and forgetting to eat,
distance from loved ones,
pushing and pushing and pushing and—
a pearl.

Every child grows a pair of wings.
Some are just never taught to fly.