Romantics

Romantics seldom get happy endings. The thrill of cliff diving is quickly met by horrors at the bottom. To love as a romantic is to court catastrophe.

What starts as a delicate thrill, a skip of the heart at a glance soon swells into an obsession that consumes all else.

The object of desire becomes an idol before which the romantic readily sacrifices their dreams, their stability, their sense of self.

One by one, the foundations of a balanced life erode, washed away by an unrelenting tide of passion.

Calm waters turn to raging rapids, sweeping away reason and restraint. Lovers cling to each other as they careen towards the precipice, heedless of the jagged rocks below, lost in a fantasy that they alone exist in the world. Their singular focus makes them blind to the gathering storm.

And when at last they meet the inevitable shattered end, the romantic is left hollow, far below where they started.

For them, love's wreckage is a tragedy etched into their soul. While others heal and move on, the romantic continues to pick at the scab, cherishing the scar it leaves behind. A badge of honour that proves the depths of their devotion.

In bleak nights to come, the scent, the memory of lost love lingers like a ghost refusing to relinquish its hold. A siren song beckoning the romantic to once more dive headlong into waters that drowned them before. Unlearning the lessons of the past, they seek to reclaim that which destroyed them.

Self-destruction becomes the only destination for romantics who yield again and again to love's spell. Hope fades that the next union will be the one to last, to validate the sacrifices made. And yet they cannot resist love's call, moths forever throwing themselves at the flame.

The shipwrecks, when they come, are almost a relief. A denouement to the drama that gives shape to an empty life. For in the throes of passion lived and lost, the romantic finds their tragic purpose.

An ode to the sheer expanse of human feeling. Another chapter etched into the anthology of their irrevocably damaged heart.