The Return by Matthew Nienow
How does one aim toward nothing without tripping into nihilism?
The Return
Here I am again, staring out the window, watching nothing in particular happen to the trees. I hear a raven make from nothing a sound like a drop of water—that sound falling into the cavern of my brain. How does one aim toward nothing without tripping into nihilism? I banished the drink in order to live. I returned to myself by making room for nothing.
First published in ONLY POEMS (October 2023)
That's so sad, like not drinking anymore could leave a hole in us. Well, I just wanna say that it's NOT nothing, it sure is something! And it's a good something!
This poem feels like a man sitting quietly inside the ruins and beginnings of himself, listening for any sound that might still anchor him to the world.
The stillness he describes is not emptiness but a fragile shelter, a place where he can finally hear the faint movements of his own mind.
Even the raven’s tiny drop‑like call becomes a kind of visitation, a reminder that the world still reaches him, even gently.
His question about aiming toward nothing carries the tremble of someone afraid that silence might swallow him instead of save him.
You can feel the thin line he walks between healing quiet and the old darkness that once tried to claim him.
When he admits he banished drink, the poem opens like a wound, revealing the private battles that sobriety never fully names.
His return to himself feels hesitant, tender, like someone relearning how to inhabit a body without numbing it.
The “nothing” he makes room for is not void but a clearing, a small, sacred space where breath can settle without fear.
There is a deep, aching gentleness in the way he watches the world, as if trying to trust its small movements again.
In the end, the poem becomes a confession of survival: that sometimes the only way back to oneself is through a silence that holds rather than erases.