Where the Light Doesn’t Land

There is a place
in me
that no longer catches light.

Not broken—
just emptied,
the way a shadow
remains
after the thing that cast it
walks away.

I don’t remember
the moment it happened.
Only the soft collapse,
like a star
quietly deciding
it will not burn anymore.

People ask
what changed.
I tell them nothing,
because the truth
has no shape
to point at.
It’s an outline,
a thinning,
a place where warmth
refuses to gather.

You touched nothing
and still
something slipped loose.
Not a soul torn out—
just a drifting,
a slow unthreading
of whatever held me
upright.

Now there’s a hush
inside my chest,
a room without air,
a door that opens
onto nothing
but the echo
of what used to answer
when I reached for myself.

I walk around it
carefully,
as if the absence
might spill.
As if the hollow
might widen
and swallow
the rest of me.

And sometimes,
when the world is quiet,
I swear I can feel
the outline
of the thing you took—
not the thing itself,
just the space
it left behind,
glowing faintly
like a constellation
missing its brightest star.