Empty Space: A Friday Freewrite

Empty.

Everything is gone. Just slanted wood floor and shadows from the sunbeams remain. There's nothing here to give a sense of scale or even to make the space make sense. You can't tell what happened here. The walls can't whisper memories of the hands held on the couch or the tears cried there months later. The floors can't sing you the song of how he twirled you around, half asleep and sliding in your socks yet safe in his arms as he dipped you low and pulled you in close. The windows can't wrap you in lullabies of how the rain soothed you to sleep when the darkness seemed desolate, or how the sun stirred you to believe again, try again, love again. You can't hear echoes of late nights of laughter with best friends, the tunes of the songs blasted here, the voices on the TV from your favorite shows. The kitchen doesn't carry the scents of the meals cooked here, the cookies baked here to be shared with friends, the coffee brewing every morning to keep the writing coming. The hallways don't hold the frames of memories from past travels and photographs from seasons long gone. The air doesn't hold the sweet scents of autumn that burned from crackling wicks long into the night. 

This place is empty. A shell. A vacant memory.

Empty.

Everything is gone. Soon this space will hold new faces, the floors will carry new feet, the walls will surround new life.

Remember: you were here. This space mattered. Imperfect and impulsive though it was to live here, it mattered. Life, sweet and stretching and important, happened here. This place is empty and this is a farewell, but the next steps are full, your heart is full, and this is the start of something new.

---

Find more Friday Freewrites here!