Modern Romanticism

Whatever I’ve seen happen to her, stays with her, while I’ve gone to shed tears in private. If I’m to blame, she won’t admit it, and won’t lash out. It isn’t necessary. I recognize it, by myself. For I see what I’ve caused, because I’ve broken down her walls. Four of them. They closed her in, and I find myself to be responsible for the aftereffects of vulnerability.

Since I’ve loved her, she said she feared nothing in being with me. Since everything declined, she still says she fears nothing. But it is for a different reason. Her lack of fear is because pain was always her dearest and closest friend. It’s an eternal era of nighttime, one with a devotion that has been most apparent. Its loyalty has always been more evident than my own.

Because it doesn’t matter at all what caused disconnection. She’s found her way back, already. In her mind, she doesn’t dwell on what I have become afflicted with, being the remorse for what might have been constructed to be the simplest, most beautiful of places. She says, “What I feel is what I’m used to,” and as I turned to walk away from her, I am tempted to look back. When I do look back, my pain takes shelter inside me and I am looking over at her rebuilt fortress.

Walls that are blanketed with the colors of drear. Despair. Loathing. It’s all tightly wrapped, and it is suffocating. But there’s no more love to give. There’s nothing left for her to confide, and nothing more from me to decide on. All this, because she’s already found her way back to her side.

Where’s hope? It has come, it has stayed, as it always remains as it is, as an ever-dimming light too stubborn to be completely snuffed out.

But that’s because I want something to return, to come back to my embrace. She won’t return, because her crippled legs and burned wings leave only her arms to cradle her shadows.

She’s there. I am here. And there’s an entire library of memories in between.