On the highway, an empty space
where you are not driving. At the college,
a chair where you don’t learn.
In this room, a tall and slender empty space
where you are not. Not whistling,
not closing your eyes and humming,
not eating noodles, not reading the news.
Everywhere I am, this space you will never be.
Not in Ohio. Not in the woods with walnuts falling.
Not laughing with these new friends.
Not in these hands and not in these arms
and not in these words where you are
because you are not.
I would not fill these emptinesses
with anything else is. They are anything
but empty, these spaces of you.