The Hollow Man Who Loved

They say life is nothing without love—
without the soft weight of a hand in yours,
the quiet understanding in another’s gaze,
the feeling that, for once, you are not alone.

But for him, love was only a rumor,
a song sung by voices not his own,
a language his lips could not form,
a warmth his skin had never known.

He watched it bloom in others—
felt it pass by like a phantom breeze,
brushed against it in passing glances,
envied its glow from the edges of existence.

And yet, love never knocked at his door.

He wrote of it in trembling ink,
sang it in borrowed melodies,
whispered its name into the hollow night,
but love did not answer.

Perhaps it was never meant to.

Born into hands that did not want him,
held by arms that did not stay,
he learned young that love was a ghost,
a myth that haunted the lucky.

To him, love was stagnant water,
murky, still, rotting beneath the surface.
A thing spoken of in poetry and prayers,
but never something he could hold.

Yet he did not curse the ones who left him empty.
No—he simply accepted the silence,
let loneliness settle into his skin,
let the ache of absence carve itself into his bones.

Years passed like a slow funeral march,
each moment a candle flickering, fading.
Time became his only witness,
his only god, his only shadow.

And then—one day—he almost found it.
A flicker, a taste, a fleeting glimpse of warmth.
For a moment, he stood in the light,
felt love’s hands brush against his weary soul.

But love, like the wind, is a cruel thing.
It does not linger for the lost.

And so, he stitched his solitude into armor,
let the weight of his loneliness become his crown.
He learned to stand in the darkness,
to make a home in the quiet ruin of himself.

Yet even now, he dares to believe.
Not in the love he was never given,
not in the hands that never reached for him,
but in the love he still holds,
fragile and aching,
for a world that never loved him first.