On the long empty days
when the breakfast table lay dismal,
her chair vacant and the sun poured
through the windows with good cheer,
irritating me in it's stubbornness
to clash with my downcast mood,
I made my way down the pebbled path
behind the garden where many a time
we had ambled following the sound
of the playground yonder.
The day, relentless in its cheerfulness
bursting with the warmth and colour of summer,
was a slap in the face of a mourning man.
How cruel, how merciless it was
of an old man's sorrow,
determined to overpower him with its radiance.
And I, who considered my self a heartbroken lover,
doggedly kept my misery close
letting it wash over me to dampen every cheerful sight
determined to never smile again in my life
for I had lost her.
My spirits in their melancholy were a pleasure.
I felt poetic
I felt unique
Special in my loss
Determined to revel in my exclusiveness.
Like the romantic lover I never was,
I paused at every sight that spoke of her,
sighed when I saw a blooming flower.
The lilies she used to pick,
carefully setting them in her hair,
continued blushing and blooming with freshness and youth.
Did they not mourn her,
their mistress who smiled upon their glory?
Did they not want to wilt and weep in her dear memory?
Such thoughts I had those days!
Crafted I guess, from novels
and films
about love
about loss
of romantic heartbreaks.
Some I suspect
from Shakespearean sonnets I dreaded in the student days.
I wonder now
how much of that misery was genuine.
Did I truly ever reach the depths of depression
as I made myself believe?
It was a pretend,
a play,
a splendid masquerade!
a story I'd stretch and mold to appeal my sentiments,
just for the sheer pleasure of feeling emotional,
of the pleasure of pitying oneself
--my dabbling in masochism.
Sometimes I cautiously suspect those heartbroken lovers
who quite like myself sigh away their days.
And yet,
and yet, I can never bring myself to look them in the eye,
for the haunting inkling
that their sorrow may indeed be genuine.
In my shame I never console them;
never utter the words:
"I know what you're going through."
I am truly alone now
belonging to neither the blithe
for my guilty nature may never rejoice,
nor with the broken hearted,
for I was a fraud, a cheating deceitful fraud.
I do not deserve that sorrow.
And this new gloominess,
that envelopes me in a gray fog,
isolated from the world around me.
of being truly alone,
with a sorrow unrecognized,
uncategorized.
Is this gloominess
genuine?
For it is far more unique
than the first.
I would have it another way
if I could.
For the blithe party
seems far more pleasing now,
And the bona fide miserable
have people who can say
"I know what you're going through."
Real emotions are unavoidable though.
So this is--must be--real.
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