When Love Dies...

After years of searching, and wrong turns, you finally found the one of your dreams. Your eyes met across a crowded room, in a dim cafe, walking by the sea - all those old cliches, yet fresh and new. Your best friend, your soul mate - you met, you fell in love, you promised each other 'forever.'

You stuck together through thick and thin, through all the ups and downs that life has thrown at you. You built a life together, and made a happy home in which to grow old together. You've weathered all the storms - or have you? What happens when the one you love, your best friend, your soul mate, tells you they don't love you anymore?

How did this happen? When did it happen? When did it start? How could you not have seen it? ...and how do you pick up the pieces and go on when the one you loved more than anyone, your best friend in the world, doesn't want you anymore?

Two hearts lie, bleeding, on the floor where once love lived, now cold and lorn;

To lips that spoke of love, to arms that held all life, and light, and hope,

To souls, now empty of that pairing bond, one to another bound,

I say, "How can I live,

How can I breathe, when all the air is gone -

When all the love is gone?"

And answers have I none...

Two hearts lied. Bleeding on the floor, love lies as well. Cold, alone,

Two lips that spoke of love, two arms that once held all the world

In sacred bond, now nothing hold - no one loves here any more;

My arms are empty now;

My bed is empty as the life you left behind;

A life that wonders how

It goes, unwanted, on...

Did love die slowly, strangling from the petty 'day-to-day'?

Did sight, and sound, and too-familiar chafing wear away desire?

When turned your head, your heart, from mine?

I never loved you less;

You smile still brightened room and warmed my heart,

A beacon shining through the storm,

Safe harbor's light...

My mind is racing, counting up the signs - so crystal in the clarity of hindsight -

Ticking off the signals not received, the subtle shadings then ignored,

And every slightest hint of looking other-ward...

The willful blindness of

Love's un-belief, undone by need, and fear,

And yet, shamed by desire,

Still wanting you...

Our bed is empty, sheets once dewed with love are sweat-slick cold,

Bone-deep arm-ache, gut-sick, freeze within with icy breath of un-desire;

And that bleeding heart, ce coeur sangant, this sign of grieving love,

Bleeds out that last drop of

Our love upon the stony, unforgiving ground

Where lover's roses, verdant, bloomed

In scarlet grace...

This heart is far to bruised and torn to start again, to seek anew,

To search, to hope - too many pieces Humpty-like upon the floor;

Some bits of dreams, some shards of prayer. No potter's hand

Could ever mend, un-break,

What careless hands left, loosed, and threw away;

Thus shattered trust and faith, and broke

From grief am I...

Yet broke and heart-worn, still I linger here, though not for love,

For love is gone to others arms, and empty of you, mine hold only memories;

Hold fast to dreams, for fast they fade, and faster, flee from my embrace;

Hold heart, hold mind, hold self,

And gently fold the shredded rags of soul

Against another day when breath,

Or warmth,

Or light

Might yet return...

© 2011, Text by Elle Fredine, All rights reserved