Strip the room bare, piece by piece,
watch the air expand into spaces once filled,
a vase, a chair, the clock that hummed silently,
gone. Now the walls throb with absence.
We've been taught to mourn the missing,
but the empty frame sharpens the portrait,
its lines more fierce, its colours more certain.
What remains throbs, louder now,
the weight of each remaining thing grows.
A book, once ignored, beckons.
Chairs seem taller, proud in their vacancy.
Holding the shape of those who sat
but are no longer sitting. The chessboard's grid,
no longer a decoration, asks for fingers,
begs for strategy, begs to matter.
Loss pulls at us, but what if it also clarifies?
We are creatures who forget to notice,
until the ground shifts and we see
not the void, but the survivors.
The gaps sing with an intensity,
that can only exist in the space of subtraction.
The fewer the notes, the more the music hums,
in the tight, trembling air.
In the emptiness, what remains isn't just what is left
it is louder, sharper, significant in ways
we were too crowded to feel before.
In loss, we gain a new vision, where what stays
demands our gaze and commands a deeper gravity.
What we lose in breadth, we gain in depth.
The light that falls on what is left
glows with the weight of what has gone.
Copyright 2024 Savva Emanon ©