Vacant Poem by Patti Masterman

We drive the hollow roads
Past empty grey buildings
Until the emptiness leaps up inside us:
A cataract of loss, where nothing moves,
Nothing for ever more
Between us, except ravening silences
Bare walls.

Imagine the echoes unheard,
The closets keepers of huge secrets
No one ever let free,
Blank spots on tear-stained walls
Where faces used to hang.

If that vacuum could chase after us,
It would pack us away in tissue paper
Where nothing is allowed to breathe.