I thought our portrait was the glistening masterpiece of my fair collection,
but reframed, it is of Dorian Gray showing every veiled age of your affection.
Our time-worn realness was to me the beauty of a timeless work of art,
but to you displayed another crack ever deeper every day we were kept apart.
And you slashed out when denying the smoking chisel still in your hand,
but that you wouldn't own it wielded your only wound we couldn't withstand. 

I thought we were re-writing a classic with the never-ending I’d only read of
and our fresh pages were scribed as one in the dried ink of ardent love;
over the endless muddy miles we would walk to find our way together,
but then our path twisted to two when to a storm you would not weather. 
The fog made clear my headstrong nature had been taken by the wrong story 
and I had been gratifying my shallow soldier, not bewitching my Mr. Darcy.

I thought our show would run forever and I wouldn't be singing on my own,
and the dream I dreamed would come to be, but not the epitaph on my stone,
for, with you as my Marius, I first felt the highs of the mayor's daughter.
But our dueling scripts got crossed... and you paced the stage as Aaron Burr.
I went dark as you fired early, and in that moment, I hoped you would burn
for choosing to throw away our shot in fear instead of waiting for our turn. 

I thought our history remade when my missing prince relit our dark tower,
til deserted amidst battling thorns when you unmasked as a great pretender.
And rose under the fallen helm, my Henry VIII to condemn your Anne Boleyn, 
for the betrayal of being more than the flawless pearl of your obsession.
But now you've cut us down with two swings of blades of the sharpest steel,
I lay on the green, casting my silent prayer, you'll grieve the best of me still.

I know my own will too never rival Joseph Heller's genius way with words.
Orr his brilliant gift for making one laugh at the tragically absurd. 
But you were my feather-seeking Colonel demanding ever 1 more mission
unaided through your riddled ego's minefield or face the stockade for sedition. 
So I look forward to the last time that I will ever think of you, 
and that I will never know it is the sweetest Catch-22. 

_{^{My apologies to Anne Boleyn, karma, and human decency for comparing getting dumped to her real execution. I wrote the words, but managed to offend even myself with this. But they work on multiple levels, including personal meanings, so I can’t quite get myself to delete them or figure out how to rework the stanza to make it more palatable. And no one reads these anyway! And even though I’m clearly referring to the musical, since Hamilton is based on real history, I should include Alexander in this apology, and I sincerely do. For the sake of thoroughness, my apologies to the Princes in the Tower (King Edward V and Prince Richard of Shrewsbury) as well.}}