The Void: Nothing to name, nowhere to stand
No borders, no compass, no ground
An endless stretch with no edges to hold
Edges would be a kindness
Marking order, form, endings, beginnings.
Like a sailor stuck in an infinite sea
No land encroachments to comfort him,
Devoured by confronting space and emptiness,
The seaman sees no sign of life except for seaweed, sharks, and foul.
They are quite a caustic lot — each either indifferent or enemies
Only the salty air, provides half-hearted support:
Well, you’re still here aren’t you? Live!
The air you breathe means you belong here - at least for the moment.
Is oxygen a gift, or a sentence, in a Void so boundless and wide?
One feels foolish for wasting five years, or even one for that matter.
Each void is a vacuum — merciless, echoing, absurd.
One can only stay hollow so long before pondering,
Maybe I took a wrong turn?
Because I do not recognize this place anymore
I don’t recognize this strange feral community or my new habits
I can’t find the light that used to dance behind my ancient eyes
This Void feels especially threatening due to
Searching many moons for an edge of purpose
To draw a rightful border or
A line in the sand to signal direction, which says:
“Ah, now, I understand. Set sail to the north.”
There are days when the silence inside the Void is so loud
It mocks your attempts to rebuild.
You begin to whisper to ghosts for answers,
Only to realize the ghosts are made of your own discarded selves
Versions of you that trusted too easily, hoped too freely,
Believed in edges where there were none,
Even memory becomes suspect here.
Did I dream those times I felt whole?
Or did the sea steal them too?
And yet, something stirs. Not hope,
But sour defiance — a graduation from apathy or despair.
Inside a steely refusal to vanish quietly into the mist
If there is no edge, I will draw one violently,
If society’s lost, I’ll befriend the ghosts,
If no shore exists, I will name the water as home
And find another rhythm in its endless sway.
But who can live in such a Void forever?
I’ve been out here too long, and the stars don’t talk anymore.
The world is seasick, floating on nothing that matters
And when something does matter, it’s quiet for far too long
There are no more mirrors, just a long hallway of echoes
There are empty faces, broken bonds, and
Lawless words that taunt
While I remain overwhelmed by the absence of structure,
Fragments of my former selves
Once whole — respected, even
Now scatter like sea mist in the wind
On a stark, February Tuesday.
Each droplet displaced, yet certain where to go:
Some drawn to cloudy hush above,
Others sink back into the sea
Even sea mist knows its place in the order of things.
And so must we, it seems.
Reading your poem felt like swallowing seawater in the middle of an existential monologue, burning, bracing, and oddly clarifying. It depicts the void and it embodies it, with a rhythm that feels like drifting, adrift, not directionless, because there’s intent in the surrender. What struck me the most was the bitter elegance of defiance: the choice not to hope, but to name the water home, a sovereign act of survival pretending to be madness. That’s where I found a new nuance, not just the tragedy of the void, but the creativity of the lost.
Because when the world disintegrates, language doesn’t retreat, it rebels. Drawing borders where none exist, naming ghosts, conversing with mist. The poem reminds me that even when nothing holds, naming still does. It’s a cartographer’s cry from within the chaos: if no maps are left, I’ll make one from memory, inked in salt. And that, to me, is the most human thing imaginable.
Thank you for this wonderful poem!