"Came back to the past but no one is here anymore" by PQHAÜS

"Came back to the past but no one is here anymore" by PQHAÜS

(Acrylic on canvas / 16x20 inches / 2025)

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On the way back home, I drove in silence. Not the kind of silence that feels peaceful, but the kind that wraps around you like a thick fog, suffocating and inescapable. People don’t understand what it’s like when the only sound you hear is your own heartbeat, slow and heavy, echoing against the weight of your own sadness. When the only movement is the slow, steady trail of tears slipping down your cheekbones, warm at first, then cold. That’s when you know—this time, it won’t be a quick recovery. This time, the road back to normal will be long, unfamiliar, and lonely.

When I got home, I barely had the strength to do anything. My unfolded clothes were still sprawled across the bed, a mess I was too exhausted to fix. I pushed them onto the floor and collapsed, sinking into the mattress as if it could swallow me whole. Just like that, I escaped—ran away from reality the only way I knew how. Sleep.

I dreamed, and for the first time in what felt like forever, it wasn’t just a dream. It was a memory reborn. A second chance. I was back in my childhood home, the one I had spent years aching for in my hollow, suffocating adulthood. I stepped into my old room, and everything was there, waiting for me, untouched by time. The bed frame my dad had spent hours assembling, cursing under his breath before laughing at himself. The crumpled posters I had carefully taped to the walls, now curling at the edges as if they, too, were tired. The backpack my aunt had given me for my birthday, still standing by the desk like it knew I would come back.

For a fleeting moment, warmth spread through my chest. I was home.

Then, I turned.

And there was no one.

The house, once full of voices, of laughter, of love—it was empty. Hollow. A ghost of itself, just like me. I had spent my entire life wanting to return to this place, convinced that if I could just go back, even for a moment, I could feel whole again. But I was wrong. The past isn’t a home you can return to. It’s a bird you have to set free, even when your hands tremble and your heart begs you not to let go.

I stood there, drowning in the aching contradiction of nostalgia—the desperate longing to hold on and the cruel necessity of letting go. The past had been my refuge, my safe place in a world that often felt unbearable. I had spent years clutching onto its edges, replaying memories like old film reels, convincing myself that somewhere in those frames, I could find the missing pieces of myself. But the past isn’t a place we can live. No matter how much we ache for it, no matter how much we try to keep it alive, it remains just that—a memory, a shadow, a ghost.

I wasn’t just standing in my childhood home. I was standing in the absence of everything that made it feel alive. And they were gone. And if I stayed here, in this dream, in this grief, I would be gone too—trapped in a place that no longer existed, a prisoner of my own yearning.

When I woke up, it felt like I had just come back from another world, one that had already started fading the moment my eyes opened. The clock glowed in the darkness—3:23 AM. My phone buzzed on the floor, a small, insignificant sound in the vast silence of my room. My pillow was soaked. I hadn’t even realized I had been crying.

I turned my head toward the window and caught my reflection in the glass—a sad, ugly man, hollowed out by time and longing. A man suffering for people who are no longer on this planet. I wanted to reach out, to pull him close, to tell him he wasn’t alone. But he seemed to be too far away.