I fell in head over heels in love on two occasions and never again after. The wiser me part of me probably wouldn't call it love. He probably call a fickle and fleeting naive infatuation. The other part of me, the one that hasn't been completely drowned in sorrow and spite, stays ever the romantic. I remember the first time. The memory of it leaves a bitter taste in mouth, like a mouthful of copper pennies. It's almost not worth mentioning except that she shattered my innocent heart. The pain of love is a funny thing. It is like intentionally putting your hand over a scorching flame and then retreating back in shock because such an action actually hurt like somehow we, as kids, thought it wouldn't. Upon the heartbreak what anyone feels immediately is the sense of betrayal. It's ironic how that goes hand in hand with love. Romantic tragedy. To trust a love so passionately, so deeply, then to look down at your chest a find a point of a stiletto driven through it by someone you never thought could have the courage to do so. That small little sinister muse. I guess I should thank her really because without her I wouldn't have began to write as I do now. A lot of previous readers of my works will realize there's quite a few recurring themes: death, despair, betrayal, things we lock in the deepest corners of ourselves and throw away the key. Now the second time is truly the most grand, the most vulnerable, the most upsetting. See, I met this raven haired girl. God was she truly beautiful. Mesmerizing as it were.  She is often the subject in some of my poems. Sometimes as aptly refer to her as the raven hair girl and other times she's the sole woman in my works. She was truly a muse for me. It was as if I was staring a mirror image of me. Our common interests lined up like constellations. We were attracted to the darker things in life. Enjoying black humor, tv shows, you name. We even shared the same favorite work: Edgar Allan Poe's Dream-Land. That's where I drew her in and she me. I never wrote anything before to anyone until her. I gifted her a poem you see, she has it framed and on her night stand. I do not know if it is still there but I imagine it is. Nothing can move a person more than words and I guess I'm a bit more old fashion than most. The conversations we had went from dusk til dawn and so did the video chats. It was one of those occasions where you lost track of time, where your eyes start failing but you fear going to sleep because you don't know if it's all some fantasy you conjured up but then one day it just stopped. It was abrupt. No reason or rhyme. I say that but I'm sure there was a reason. I'm a simple man not an idiot. The day it happened I woke happier than most because it was finally a time where I thought she'd be the one. I was so sure of it. Oh how foolish I was. She disappeared, distanced herself, vanish like a ghost. Like a magic trick. An illusion. One moment I was in heaven, the next I'm falling from the sky like the Devil himself except there was nothing to stop me from falling. I ask myself what I could've done different and replay ever conversation over and over again in my head like some lunatic. I was always thinking there had to had to have been something wrong with me. The pain I felt, it stayed and is still here. Itching underneath my skin. It wasn't a physical pain you see but my body surely felt it. Draining and persistent. Almost like a parasite or leech even. She still haunts me but it is not a ghost I would soon part with because you see while im becoming madder by the hour it also inspires my madness. It is both damning and bliss. You see I am trapped in sort of a perpetual limbo, a limbo of...madness but I suppose we are all a bit mad here.