Sometimes life echoes too loudly in the silence. The messy cacophony of joy, and pain, and love, and heartbreak, and a thousand other spirits in the maddening chorus echoing where there should be emptiness. Should be quiet. Should be you.

Ethereal and unaware, existing in the realm of not-quite-dreams spun to life in the dark. You are my hopes, my fears, my foe, my friend, my half-that-isn’t, and you aren’t real. Never real. Never there, past dawn and daydreams, in the world I walk.

And yet… I can feel the hole you leave behind. The shadowed silence of would-have, could-have, should-have, silent until I sleep again.

Sometimes life echoes too loudly in the silence.