Empty Kitchen, Heavy Mouth

The faucet drips, a cold metronome

measuring absence—tick, drip, tick, drip.

Tin can rattles empty on the shelf,

label curled like a dead leaf.

My stomach isn't hungry for food,

but for the sharp silence left behind

when plates go unwashed, and words

are swallowed instead of spoken.

I stand before a countertop bare

as the last echo of a conversation

that cut deeper than an empty fridge,

a hunger not for sustenance but for something gone.

The cold drip counts out the moments

while my mouth tastes nothing but weight,

a hollow clatter in the quiet kitchen.