Mending

by Paul Wadey, 17 October 2023

In the mind’s hidden chamber, love’s relic resides,

A porcelain heart, fractured beneath sable tides.

Deceive not yourself; every cardiac form bears a flaw,

Weathered by love, irreversible as natural law.

What, you ask, is the purpose of this agony?

A terminus, or the advent of an alternate symphony?

I contend, dear interlocutor, a truth we cannot elude:

Our lives bear a cartography suffused with sorrow’s mood,

A tactile dialect of soul, emotions in relief.

Within the labyrinth of woe, where we’ve ventured deep,

Verdant terrains are transformed to barren sweep.

Yet juxtaposed with ancient ruins, a nascent rose ascends,

Existence’s paradox, the manner in which life wends.

Even in solitude’s cavern, a sliver of dawn appears,

A prelude to sunlight amidst the midnight of our fears.

And what of the hearts that Cupid’s arrows have torn?

The deepest rivers, the loftiest peaks, also bear signs of being worn.

One faction states, “A shattered heart never recuperates,

A fragmented vessel, insensible in its altered states.”

Another asserts, “Each cicatrix embodies wisdom’s cost,

An acquired understanding, no matter the turbulence crossed.”

I avow both notions are accurate in love’s overarching design,

In this paradoxical, yet sanguine, tapestry of humankind.

Despond not, for within your heart’s chasms lies golden grain,

An alchemy of suffering, your torment not without gain.

Akin to a masterpiece, your anguish possesses worth,

From muted notes emerges a mellifluous verse.

Life’s value derives from its complex loom of gain and lack,

A narrative enriched, yet simplified in its abstract.

We function as scribes in this boundless cosmic scope,

Revising themes of love and loss with distinctive hope.

In the embroidery of heartbreak, we discern our course,

Led by history’s hand, we fashion tomorrow’s discourse.

To mend is not deletion, but a reconfiguration of state,

A novel form given to both love and suffering’s weight.

Thus, we are unshackled from destiny’s confining gate,

Phoenixes, reborn from ashes, believe it’s never too late.

As guiding constellations perforate the obsidian night,

We radiate brighter for our scars, in our subsequent flight.

Look around; we’re immersed in emotional debris,

Love’s ephemera caught in autumn’s weeping spree.

In a room’s corner, a neglected message still emits a glow,

Silently pondering its successor, in love’s ebb and flow.

This leaves us pondering, are we at an end or commencement?

An erased canvas or a concealed artistic statement?

Heed this closely; these utterances are your map’s keys,

To the labyrinthine seascape of fluctuating emotional degrees.

Indeed, we are navigators amidst life’s turbulent tides,

Each submerged wreck contributes to the story that abides.

Should you think only melancholy lurks in these oceanic beds,

Remember, for each nadir, an accompanying zenith also spreads.

The seabed harbours not merely the relics of our fears,

It’s festooned with pearls, crystallised from bygone years.

And that pinnacle, scarred by nature’s eternal tussle,

Is replete with veins of ore, life’s intrinsic mettle.

The debate ensues: are we victims or creators of fate?

Bound by destiny or furnished with mutable slate?

Both perspectives possess an aspect of veracity,

Neither nullifies, but enriches the other in their reciprocity.

It’s not erasure we seek, but an additional chromatic layer,

A refreshed aria within an existing, mournful air.

The soul possesses an inherent facility for regeneration,

Transcending its prior state through novel transformation.

Thus, we are more than mere survivors in this cosmic dance,

We’re composers, artists, elevating our existence to more than chance.

By former flames’ illumination, we steer toward love’s new shores,

In realms unfamiliar, leaving behind yesterday’s closed doors.

In the stillness of night, as Earth’s rotation takes its pause,

We’re plagued by the murmurs of our unfulfilled cause.

The fallacy persists that life is an immutable script,

Fixed and irrevocable, its course tightly gripped.

But that’s not the narrative my pulsating core yearns to vocalise,

Existence is not a sentence, but an unshackled enterprise.

Within each shed tear, a fragment of enlightenment is gleaned,

A nuance of wisdom, obscure and yet to be seen.

We’re more than passive receptacles for stories we relate,

We’re active fabricators, disrupting a predetermined state.

A fresh stanza is pending, in the silence we apprehend,

Affording a possibility to revise what has been penned.

We emerge as more than sum totals of our anterior existence,

Architects of a prospective reality, in which love meets less resistance.

No longer captive to bygone wounds and historical harms,

We are refreshed canvases in an unseen artist’s embracing arms.

We’re not simply vessels for narratives of regret,

We’re repositories of culture, and manifold vignettes.

For each fractured heart and tear that freely flowed,

Is another dab of colour, another syntactic code.

At this juncture, or perhaps it is a newfound dawn,

We discover love persists in the heart’s secluded lawn.

Not bound by scars, but by the interstitial golden seam,

The allure, you see, resides in the regions yet to gleam.

In love’s intricate ballet, we find our authentic poise,

A celestial performance in the cosmos’s cacophonous noise.

Our spirits rise, not from ashes, but from an internal pyre,

To love and be loved—our most earnest, undying desire.