Ghost in the Womb

When emptiness betrays
and swells your stomach sweetly,
like pregnancy, a promise
of more to come,
it is lying to you,
a false whisper that a future
is ahead, when there is just more
of that same emptiness.
Zero plus zero to the zeroeth power,
is all there is left.
The baby's kicking, against
the soft bulge of that
phantom womb, is the
sound of the heart dying,
snapping strings one by one,
hoping, somehow, to
spread wings and fly away.