Modern Romanticism

Stricken heart,
Where are you
In this torment?
You were loved by a sickness
Of something higher
Than what brought you low.
A beauty so faraway
Leaves my hands full of clay
To sculpt this empire of scorn
From eyes that are eaten and worn.

Days are ripped
From the future's tip
Atop the precipice
Where failure is practiced
By the longest shot,
The roundest knot
In a heart made to burst
Under the pressure of something worse
Than the love I thought was best,
Than the woman who'd bring me rest.

You are the empire
Built of something higher,
While I remain in this halved
Life,
Of one that never exceeds
Past a remaining strife.

I startle myself
On the bloodied plight
To have it all back
To a heart made of marble.

I look to the direction of smoothness,
Like edges of waters
Never receiving the storm.
It is still the hard coating of something so sick.