you ever just hit a wall you know that feeling like you’re walking through thick air and suddenly it’s just brick or something immovable yeah that’s where i’m at these days feels like i been pouring myself out for so long into the church into the community into her and now it’s like the tap just ran dry it was sunday night after the funeral everyone gone the house quiet except for the hum of the fridge a sound i never noticed before but now it’s everything you walk around your whole life with this background noise this constant companionship and then it’s just gone poof like a whisper blown away by the wind you try to pray you know like you’ve done every night for fifty years since you were a little kid on your knees beside your bed and the words just stick in your throat they feel like cotton or old dust you try to lift them up but they just fall flat i knelt down by the bed the one we shared the space beside me cold empty the pillow still got that faint smell of her lavender and something else something like old paper and warmth and i closed my eyes i tried to say the lord’s prayer tried to conjure up that familiar comfort that old connection but it was like shouting into a well you hear your own voice echo back nothing else just the void a cold draft where warmth used to be it wasn’t sadness not really it was just…nothing like a flat line on a machine like an old radio playing static where music used to be all those years all those sermons all those times i told people about faith and perseverance and god’s unfailing love and now i’m here and it’s just hollow it’s like a cheap tin can when you expected a solid bell you bang on it and it just makes a pathetic little clink not even a echo that’s the worst part not the grief not the missing her though that’s there too a dull ache like an old wound it’s the silence where god used to be where prayer used to live it’s just empty a vast empty room with the lights out and you can’t find the switch i got up eventually shuffled to the kitchen made some tea didn’t even taste it just drank it cause that’s what you do right you go through the motions the sun will come up the garbage needs to go out the bills still arrive god i hate the bills and you just keep moving cause what else are you gonna do sit there and stare at the wall forever it’s just a long stretch of highway now no landmarks no signposts just the grey asphalt stretching out and you gotta keep driving even though you don’t know where you’re going or why anymore it’s just… a lot man it’s just a lot and nobody really tells you about this part the part where the well runs dry where the words stop feeling real where all the promises you made and heard start to feel like dust in your mouth what do you even do with that