Empty Room

downstairs,
just under my office,
where i now work hard
to fill my empty life,
are two rooms,
also empty,
that i can hardly
bear to enter.

if there were any way at all,
i’d burn them off my house.
collapse this floor down.
replace those rooms
with this one,
as if that emptiness
never existed.

i would destroy them, hoping
the emptiness and pain
in my heart
would suddenly subside
with the disappearance of
those two empty rooms.

i try to fill them,
and succeed
for a short time,
with young people who
bring those rooms
and my heart back to life.

while they are here,
i visit them often,
taking pictures with my mind
so later, after they move on,
i can remember them
in my heart
and in those two empty rooms.

hoping those memories
will make me forget
that the person
they really belong to
has gone forever,
leaving those two rooms
and my heart
empty of the only life
that ever really filled them.

~ cj 2002.12.12