I left you behind.
I had too,
the pain was crushing me.
I couldn't breath anymore.

I could see naught
but the spectrum of iron and ash.

It struck me so profoundly,
As if I had seen the impossible lines
In gods ancient hands.
A resonating slap across the soul.

I could not be you anymore.
But I left you her picture,
a beautiful, broken path
and I crawled away.

I cried everyday.
At first in every regard,
and then mostly inward.
I became as a black veil
as the cathedral I build to her
slowly melted away
in the acids of anger and pain.

Around the ruin
I dug a mote
and I filled it with sarcastic regret
and I set it ablaze with volcanic irony
the hate of how I was.

I built a Castle from my own remains,
a dread and lifeless thing.
Stone by stone,
Quarried from the shell
of what I thought love would be
Each splashed with a crimson
"never again" and set soundly
against all who would come calling.

I have lived here ever since.
Walls lined with exquisite paintings.
Markers of siege I withstood
each a beautiful face, lost but never forgotten.

Everyday I sit at a simple table
covered in the jigsaw mess of it,
a broken song I wish to sing
but I am missing so many pieces
and I left the box with you.

Every ****** night
before I go to bed
I look in the silver reflection
beset by patina and time
and I peer back at the familiar
seventeen year old boy there
who has yet to fall in love with her,
to be wrapped in the glory
of her soul
and I tell the dreams in his eyes
the very essence of him
the wayward pieces of me
I am sorry, I am so very sorry,

But I had to leave you behind.