Empty

prompt: empty

The sounds that once filled the small spaces of this place echo now so loudly that it has become strange and foreign.

I bend and pick up a stray sock and an action figure left behind, as I wander through the bereft landscape that once held so many memories.

With only the colours on the wall and a handful of dings and scuffs as evidence that we once lived here, I am left with a hollow feeling. Cold and unfamiliar.

The empty that now resides here cannot speak of the endless nights rocking and nursing fussy babies, or testify to the doors slammed in anger or remember the eager feet running up and down the stairs in excitement.

The empty bears no knowledge of  the songs and stories at bedtime, the smell of cookies fresh from the oven or the birthday candles blown out in earnest.

But in the empty I realize that this place was just a shell, a place that facilitated the thing we call home. The empty teaches me that home will travel with us where ever we go. It is not confined to these four walls.  We will fill it with our laughter and our tears, with our joys and triumphs and failures.

It is empty so that someone else may fill it up again.