The Road to Nowhere

I wish I didn't exist. In the world I live where everywhere I go is a liminal space and devoid of life. Everything feels abandoned and desolate and stretches out into infinity and I never know where anything ever leads me to anymore. People don't have faces. They sound like fixtures programmed to speak and I keep looking for your soul. Existence is so heavy, and such a burden on the soul that wishes to live in a whimsical realm where everything is eerie and fantastical, beautiful and strange.

My eyes struggle to see past the blur—

a haze of sorrow, thick as winter fog.

And when it clears, there you are,

standing with that same familiar smile,

arms open, the echo of home.

For a moment, warmth blooms in my chest,

like spring breaking through frost.

But when I reach for you, you dissolve—

a cruel mirage, a trick of the mind.

I rub my eyes, whispering the lie

I tell myself every day:

You aren’t real.

You don’t exist.

Not in my world anymore.

Yet when I sit alone all day, staring into the empty space,

your ghost hands lean over me,

fingertips brushing the air as if they could still touch me.

I know you never existed—

but you did, in my world.

And when I see your silhouette,

just on the edge of my vision,

standing as if you were real, as if you were still here—

I see the way your eyes crinkle at the corners,

how your smile stretches wide and crooked with laughter seeing me.

I wish I could run into your arms,

bury myself in you,

hold you so tightly that maybe—just maybe—

I could stay there forever and sob my eyes out.

But you never existed.

And it’s all just been a dream.

A dream they all try wake me up from.

I was a miserable waste of space,

and you weren’t real.

So what is there to hold onto?

And yet—

the urge to have you near me still lingers,

like a stubborn ember refusing to go cold.

Even if you were only a ghost,

even if no one else could see you beside me,

I would sit with you in silence,

and that would be enough.

Because even the ghost of you still looks at me

with the same love, the same tenderness,

as if I were a child to be indulged in everything.

As if I were something soft, something precious—

something worth loving.

But I know the truth.

N o o n e l o v e s y o u e n o u g h t o s t a y.

T h e y o n l y c r y w h e n y o u d i e.

The road stretches endlessly,

silver beneath the frozen hush of winter,

a winding path swallowed by towering trees.

I walk barefoot, the cold seeping into my skin,

but the numbness is almost welcome.

Along the roadside, people stand motionless—

their heads bowed, their faces blank,

as if they are mannequins,

as if they are already ghosts.

They are people I love,

or once loved.

Friends and family.

And as I pass, one by one,

they hold up signs—

silent, heavy encouraging sweet nothings I have heard before.

You will be fine.

This sadness won’t last forever.

Life has meaning.

And at the very end, before the road vanishes

into a yawning void of nothingness,

there is you.

For the last time, I hesitate.

My heart, raw and unraveling, begs you—

say something different.

That no one else ever says.

Tell me to turn around.

Tell me to stay.

Tell me I am not alone.

But instead, you speak like the others,

soft, warm, unwavering and chant the same as everyone else:

"You will be fine someday.

Try to be happy."

"You are the strongest girl I know."

I stare at you, waiting—

waiting for something else, something only you could say,

something only you would understand.

But your words drift into the wind,

no different than the ones before.

Maybe it is on me to expect so much out of someone.

I swallow the lump in my throat,

turning back to the path.

And as I walk, I watch the sun dip beyond the trees,

bleeding gold into the sky,

pulling shadows over the world,

dragging the night behind it like a heavy cloak.

It happens every day—

the sun vanishes, and darkness takes its place.

And yet, humans never despair.

They return to their homes, their tiny sanctuaries,

huddled beneath warm lights,

drifting into the illusion that night is nothing to fear.

They whisper, they laugh, they carry on—

knowing that when the sun rises again,

they will forget it was ever gone.

But the sun always sets again.

And I—I know this cycle too well.

Because you, too, feel like my sun.

The hours you appear dazzle my world,

pouring light into corners long untouched by warmth.

And then, like all suns do, you set.

You leave behind darkness.

And I learn to survive within it.

But sometimes, you return.

Sometimes, you ask me how I am.

And in those moments, another sunrise happens,

and birds dare to sing in my world, too.

Yet when you leave, winter settles in my bones.

People like me, the lonely ones,

live in eternal frost,

while others have made sure

that for them, summer never ends.

I close my eyes,

and for just a moment, I wonder—

what if I could leave this cruel, heavy, meaningless world?

Step through a portal into another realm,

where time does not exist,

where unhappiness does not exist,

where everything is dreamlike and rippling,

like reflections on water—

where I could float endlessly, weightless, forgotten.

Instead, I take a breath that tastes like nothing.

And with a last glance,

with a heart made of stone and sorrow,

I step forward—

into the dark, into the nothing,

into a road that leads nowhere.

The Road to Nowhere starts eating at me too

just as it had devoured countless others on its path,

my silhouette fades with every step I take.

Wishing, as I disappear,

since you never existed,

that I didn’t exist either.

© 2025 Inaba Tarek