Built, Beautified and Broken by You

My Dearest - though that phrase now has the same feeling as a temple bell echoing at the end of something sacred. Not too long ago, rather cruelly close to the present, I thought the world only revolved around me for the sole reason of bringing your gaze to rest upon me. I will humbly admit that prior to meeting you, I felt like a bouquet of dying flowers with petals that represented days lost to boredom, and stems being memories brittle with sorrow. Like a heightened sense of reality, you came like a storm stitched in silk, and everything I previously thought decayed, began to bloom – if only for a brief period, like roses blooming towards a guillotine.

You have no idea how much I began to love you with all my heart. I utterly adored you as much as my soul was capable of; deeply, devilishly, and self-destructively. Forming into the likes of a man heading into paradise that he had only caught a glimpse of in the scriptures, but finds in the very curve of your viciously beautiful smile and coldly captivating eyes. What still has my breath caught in your eyes. If I were told I had to give my life away, I would walk to the altar without any second thoughts, and feel joy as you drained it dry.

But now and here, in the barren land you’ve deserted me in, I remain a spirit far too long unsought for in heaven and too broken to descend into hell. My suffering isn’t that you’re gone, but rather the pain is the fact that at one point I was yours and you were mine, in the agonizingly precious way only lovers sculpted in poetry and disaster can feel.

They oft asked me, “Do you still harbour feelings for her?” Such imbeciles. As if love is not something one can put away like a dusty, old novel. I do not love you, because I am you. You dwell in the insides of my bones, in the shaking of my hands, or the breath I release when night becomes unbearably silent. If they dare to pronounce your name over my headstone, I vow I will emerge from the earth’s depths and murmur it back, if only to validate my claim that death knows no control over commitment such as mine, ravaged by devotion.

In our montage, you have become mythical. To me, you are no longer simply a woman– my madness has turned you into a Goddess. Muse, tormentor, grace and salvation that you are have turned me into nothing but the destruction left, in your divine wake, a temple crumbled under the weight of too much a mortal’s worship.

O sweet vengeance I lay claim to, not crafted in animosity, but rather in omnipresence. So I say, “I shall be everywhere, my love.” In spring violets, the scent of silk from your dresses and more so, in tears that you will shed but not know the reason behind it. I shall be ashes that are scattered, not through flames but memories. Neither your nights nor home but rather your silence and mornings perfectly echo my haunting.

Your silence is home, but for me, your mornings and nights are what I will get poured onto you. Pages scribbled with longing words, the ink being blood. I ruthlessly forced myself to write poems that I thought would boost your self-esteem so much that you would not be able to leave and stay forever. But beauty, the companion which I turn to, as I have come to realise through you, abandons me in an instant, stays to paint splendid canvases. I made you divine, and in doing so, earned a spot as disposable.

But yes, I would still love you even if I get the chance again. I know that you will be the one to betray me, but even so, claiming my undoing, I've taken selfless steps towards you blindly while smiling that kept me barefoot.

So go on, forget me. Go ahead and replace me. But know this—I will always be the phantom breath on your neck at night when you think you are alone. I will always be the final stanza in every love poem you have read. I will be the ghost on the side of every hug that does not feel whole.

This, my darling, is not bitterness. It is simply the aftermath of loving someone who could not carry the weight of being loved like a religion.

I remain—ruined, radiant, and yours in all the ways you no longer care for.

—By the remnants of what once was love,
Your devoted wreck,
Lord of the Lonely Shore