The Deadman's Recital

At deep midnight, the dead began their dreadful recital,
and I, who in the tomb of my own mind had buried reason,
sat listening to a cadence long silenced by the heavy sod,
its slow iteration undoing any remaining faith in the grave.

Each utterance rose heavy from the hollow depths of the vault,
each summons stirred an ancient terror I knew too well,
until eternity unhinged its blackened jaws to swallow the night,
and I heard my own tongue, hollow and ruined, answering the dead.

I had loved with a consciousness that outlived its own beloved,
and cursed the very heavens that dared to tear our souls apart,
for what deity could demand so vast a price for pure devotion,
then leave a mortal to suffer the cold world with half of a heart?

I find a terrible beauty in sorrow, in the sharp ache of despair,
and in those distant stars that burn so coldly above the forgotten.
There exists a magnificent grace in a love that stubbornly survives
when the last fragile hope of a sweet reunion lies utterly broken.

A mournful melody circles the chambers of my thoughts,
and a bitter salt gathers upon my lips as I recall the one
whose sharp absence has forever changed the order of the world,
the one whom eternity itself cannot compel my soul to surrender.

Let the dead guard their secrets, let the weeping angels turn away,
and let the heavens grow weary of hearing an outcast plead,
for I would sooner choose damnation with the full memory of love
than be blessed with a hollow heart that had learned how to forget.

I walk through the dark with my own sorrow for company,
greeting every cold shadow as one might welcome an old companion.
If grief is the ultimate price of having loved too deeply,
I shall pay that bitter debt in full, even unto the absolute end.