The Map Gives No Answers

The ghosts gave meaning to lives
They never lived, were stories
Covering over the gaps
In walls bricking up the facts.
Absence is all that haunts us.
We scream at invented haints
In hopes there's not nothing there.

There is. We can't banish it.
It's not a map's blank spaces.
No exploring fills it in.
Memory cannot get there.
Memory cannot come back,
Not even a scrap. The lack
Into which all worlds collapse.