Lyric

Language felt wrong, oddly textured and thin

So he quit being romantic, traded myth for a grin

That never arrives — not a void, not a thing

Matte-finished nothing, sanded smooth, no sheen

He swapped himself out with a substance that’s not

A negative polish on a lukewarm thought

But first, the heart was born — that’s the trick of the clock

So the heart ages faster than the body it mocks

He sealed it inside a small rubber ball

Soft tennis blacktop, girls’ club scuff on the wall

Zip it shut — no living, no dying, no lyric to sing

No hunger that matters, no mattering thing

He ate or he didn’t — both registers clear

Calories optional, consequence smeared

Whatever he wears doesn’t register skin

Outfits dissolve before touching the “him.”

A cold wind tunnels straight into the room

Drafts like a theorem that proves there’s no bloom

Whatever the germ of the season may be

Pandemics of rumor slide right off the key

If he wakes up someday, he’ll stare, stunned by the swap

How the world learned new tricks while he learned how to stop

But louder than change is the question that stays:

Can tears still occur if she’s gone from the place?

He calls it replacement, not loss, not repair

An objectless object with deadpan air

No life, no death, no pastoral ache

No stomach to answer the choices he makes

The wind keeps insisting with clinical bite

A weather report for the end of the night

The heart in the ball keeps a time that’s too fast

Outrunning the present, embarrassed by past

It bounces, it listens, it learns how to hush

No poem, no appetite, minimal rush

When morning arrives like a software update

He’ll marvel at differences, marvel too late

And if she’s not there — that’s the final exam

Can water still form in the eyes of a man

Who replaced himself clean with a non-thing, non-mass

A matte-finished zero he hoped would last?

If tears still compile, if salt still deploys

Then maybe the heart beat the copy, the noise