NaPoWriMo / NaPoREADMo — Day 19 — The presence of absence

The presence of absence

this emptiness is not a substance
or a non-substance but a thing 

or a non-thing.  this emptiness 
has a name, a place and a form.

when we speak of it, we speak 
not of emptiness but of an emptiness, 

a singular vacancy that 
inhabits a place, a space 

in an inner landscape
like a deep canyon where 

nothing ever happens any 
more, not even weather.

~~~~~~~~

and this is how it happens.  an empty 
rumble echoes in an emptiness. 	

a space finds room to breathe
and the room finds space 

to live again in the empty 
rooms of another, and these 

emptinesses are much the same.  
they are filled with the same nots,

the same uneasy intervals
bound by different chords,

threads that thrum in the void,
the same void, the same un-

this-ness — the same— and these 
emptinesses speak to each other 

across the fullness of the world, 
through the things we cling 

to and avoid and we 
color these things and

we build them up around 
us and we call them memory

and they are never enough.