This time, these walls were hollow, echoing back any utterance that maybe made, as to somehow fill the emptiness with voices that didn’t exist. This time, this love hurt so much more, being taken so swiftly, pulled so harshly from pain to create nothingness that even the walls could not send back as real. This time, the air was so thin, breathing became a labor that you couldn’t afford. So much room yet so little space here in this place; trapped by more than hollow walls, but hollow hearts and souls not willing to let go of the emptiness they feed off of. It is so quiet here that the silence becomes a constant hum that reverberates through skulls and gives no rest to those who need it most. So completely silent, that any true sound is seen as harsh and unreal and dismissed as such. The friends are few, and the hopes fewer. But where I will go is so much worse. It is spilling over with smiles and laughter that beats at event the hardest of hearts. It is an entourage of stories and friends and lives that we can never live, because we are destined for something else completely. And we know it, but the separation exists in the fact that they don’t and will never know the burden our hearts bare. And we will never tell them, because to do so would be to strip their innocence and reveal what lies waiting in the darkness of all our minds, ready to capture the soul. They cannot see. But we can. And that is why we remained, enduring the torture of the worst kind, seeing happiness but not ever feeling it; faking love, but not ever living it. Being only a spectator of your own life and hiring the one who is to play you.