Keeping, With Nothing Left To Keep Poem by Fred Rik Kesner

'keeping, with nothing left to keep'


I go back to the place
where something once lived,
though nothing signals it now.

The cupboards are bare of clues;
dust has taken the role
of whatever once breathed here.

I try to lift what should rise,
but the air gives no reply—
only the quiet fact
that time has swept clean
every scrap I might have leaned on.

So, I stand in the cleared room,
hands empty,
waiting for a flicker
that refuses to return.

If there was a moment,
it has slipped beyond reach;
if there was a story,
its pages have turned to dust.

Yet I stay—
not to reclaim,
but to learn how to walk
with a space where something
used to be.




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