Hollow

My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

-Robert Frost

There is a quiet sometimes.  A mild buzzing of white noise throughout my house.  I sat in my kitchen today and listened to the quiet undertones of silence.  I stared at my phone.  Attempting to will a message from the Universe to appear.  It didn’t work.  The silence remained.

Most times, the silence soothes me.  My life is always so chaotic, running here and there, in and out, up and down that I usually welcome the melody that flows within the lack of noise.  Not today.  Today it wrenched in my stomach a bit as I sat fiddling with the bracelets that line my wrist.  I wanted for something more.  A phone call.  A plane ride.  An escape.  The need to be anywhere except for here consumed me.

I stared out the window, looking at the now empty trees.  I felt empty too.  In that moment I wanted something that I rarely do, for someone to be standing behind me with their arms wrapped around me so that maybe I could remember what it was like to feel something again.  Strange to feel everything and nothing all the same.  And I hold it all under this blanket of silence.  Which seems ironic for someone who always expresses herself.  But there’s a difference between what I speak and what I feel.  That, I keep to myself with the exception of a select few.  Yes, there’s a great difference. 

Today I feel strained.  Stifled.  As if something is sitting on my chest and I can’t quite breathe right.  As if something is about to surface that I’ve been pushing down, trying to avoid.  As I write, tears stream down my cheeks and I have no explanation for it.  There is no apparent cause.  There is only silence.  Perhaps that is the cause.  I’m not sure. 

Hollow.  Hollow is the word that keeps whispering across my mind.  Hollow like the empty trees.