Hollow

Vacation photos at midnight.

Golden light. Happy faces. Somewhere warm. You press like. Put the phone down. Pick it up again. Press like on another one.

The room is dark. The phone is bright. Something in you knows the difference. You press like anyway.

The Door

Food came last night.

Didn’t speak to anyone. The app handled it. He left the bag outside — footsteps, plastic settling on the floor, then the elevator.

You waited until you heard the elevator.

You’re not sure what you were avoiding. His face. The two seconds where two people look at each other and neither knows what to do with it. Thank you. No problem. Have a good night.

It seemed like too much.

This is what you’ve become. Someone for whom thank you feels like too much.

The Couch Remembers Nothing

Three invitations last month.

Too tired. Not in the mood. The people said no problem, next time. You felt relieved. Genuinely relieved.

What had you escaped? A room with people you know. Food. The possibility of saying something true and having someone hear it.

You chose the couch instead.

The couch doesn’t ask anything. The couch has never been disappointed. The couch will never remember you didn’t show up.

2 AM, Contacts

The phone numbers.

You scrolled through them once when you couldn’t sleep. Name after name. People who’d made you laugh, made you think, made you feel briefly less like yourself in a good way.

Most of them — over a year. Some longer.

You stopped on one name. You used to talk for hours. About nothing. About everything. The kind of talking that doesn’t go anywhere and doesn’t need to. You tried to remember if something had happened. Nothing happened. You just — stopped. The way water stops when the tap is turned. No drama. No ending. Just absence.

You almost called.

Two in the morning. You put the phone down.

The number is still there.

The Room You’re Already In

Sometimes you think about a hospital room.

White walls. Machines. Weak light through a window. No hand. No voice saying your name. Just strangers doing their jobs and you reduced to a body that needs monitoring.

You think of it as a fear of the future.

But then you look at your evenings. The declined invitations. The delivery bag you waited to collect. The contacts you scroll past at 2am.

The hospital room is the room you’re already in. Different furniture. Same silence.

Not Many People Stop

There was an old man on a bench last week.

You almost didn’t stop — you had nowhere to go but the motion of moving forward felt important. Something made you stop. You’re not sure what.

Twenty minutes. The weather. The neighborhood. His grandchildren called on Sundays, sometimes. Thirty-one years in the same building. He knew the names of the people who used to live there. Not the ones there now.

When you said you had to go, he said: Thank you for stopping. Not many people stop.

No self-pity. Just a fact about the world, stated plainly.

You walked home.

You didn’t feel moved the way you’re supposed to feel moved in a moment like that. You felt something more uncomfortable.

You felt seen — not by him. By the bench. By the thirty-one years. By the Sundays when the grandchildren sometimes called.

By the sometimes.

The Windows

The apartments around you.

All the windows lit at night — blue and white from screens. Each one a person. Each one probably telling themselves the same thing.

Tomorrow. Next week. When things settle down.

A building full of people waiting for the right moment to begin.

Tomorrow comes. Still waiting.

Your phone lights up. Someone from school. A dinner table. Everyone laughing. The light golden and warm.

Why do I feel lonely in a city full of lit windows, full of people, full of sound —

You look at the photo for a long time.

You don’t press like.

You put the phone face down.

The room goes dark.

You sit there.

Maybe you’re not waiting for anything.

Maybe this is just what it is now — a dark room, a quiet building, a city full of people sitting exactly like this.

Each of us.

Tomorrow.