Occupied Hollow

You are here, and you are living. So live.

I see you.
As you sit in class,
Staring blindly at the front of the room.
Your hands take the notes but you're not reading any of them.
You're not here.

At work you do the bare minimum,
Too preoccupied inside that the outside is blank.
No expressions, no emotions.
Just empty

It's hard to remember who you used to be,
Before this shell of a person you are now.
I know you were someone else.
Someone's bestfriend, someone's person, someone's child.
You were someone living.

Until somebody took all the parts you enjoyed about yourself,
Everything that made you so uniquely you,
And left you there.
They filled your hollowness with concrete.
They covered you with dirt and sticks and stones,
Threw you into the bottom of rivers, of lakes.
Of oceans.

What you're not seeing is the part of you still here.
It's so desperately trying to take root and blossom only it can't.
You've grown so used to this confined nothingness that you're destroying yourself.
Your garden is dying.
You are dying.

But you are more than what they made you.
You're more than your body, more than this life.
You just need to find yourself again.
Find the pieces of yourself that you miss,
Makeup the ones you can't find.
You need to wake up,
The world misses you.
I miss you.