The Hollow Room

In the dark hollow of my room, I slowly rot out of existence. The walls have become my only witnesses, their silence pressing in closer each day. Time passes strangely here sometimes in endless hours, sometimes in vanished weeks. I no longer feel pain, relief, or love. Even grief has dulled into something shapeless. My life has become a hollow shell with no purpose, no direction, no light to guide it forward.

My bones wither beneath the weight of stillness. My skin cracks and sheds like old paint peeling from abandoned walls. My hair falls from my head, my teeth loosen and drift away, as though even my body wishes to leave before I do. I decay inch by inch as I sit here in this dark room, abandoned and alone, while the world beyond the door continues without me.

My heart is broken and black, not from one wound, but from a thousand small fractures no one could see. Life did not tear me apart in a single storm it wore me down like water against stone. Day after day, disappointment after disappointment, silence after silence, until there was nothing left but this husk. Now I rot. Rot in this broken place, with my broken body and the hollow shell they still call a soul.

Nothing brings me joy. Things that once made me laugh now lie untouched, gathering dust beside me. Music sounds distant and thin. Food turns to ash in my mouth. The sun that slips through the blinds feels cold upon my skin. Even sleep offers no mercy, for I close my eyes only to wake as tired as before. Rest has forgotten me.

Everything fades into numbness and despair. I cannot fix this state of mind, this state of ruin I drag behind me like chains. I tell myself to rise, to move, to change, but the commands vanish before they reach my limbs. Simple tasks become mountains. A glass to fill, a floor to cross, a curtain to open—each one asks more strength than I possess. So I remain.

It did not begin this way. There was a time, decades ago, when I was full of life, full of hunger for tomorrow. I had laughter that came easily, dreams that stretched far beyond these walls, and a heart that still believed in beginnings. I remember sunlight meaning something then. I remember voices I wanted to hear, roads I wanted to follow, mornings I wanted to wake to.

Now I rot. Sitting in the same room, in the same chair, staring blankly at nothing while dust settles like snow around me. The clock moves, but I do not. The seasons change outside the window, but in here it is always the same dim evening. I wonder if this is it if this is what life has become. An empty bit of time to be endured until it runs dry.

Nothing feeds me. Nothing gives me strength. Even hope, when it comes, arrives weak and flickering, only to be swallowed by the dark before it can warm me. The world asks me to keep going yet offers no reason why.

So I will rot here, quietly and slowly, while the days pile upon me like dirt over a grave. Rot until the last of my days, however long that may be, waiting for something I cannot name and no longer believe will come.