The Hidden Heart

The Hidden Heart


The joy of love too quickly fades away;
a photograph, forgotten 'neath the sun,
of happy times before love went astray;
too many might-have-beens we've left undone.

I sift through ashen thoughts within my mind;
remembrances of what once used to be.
I wander through deserted rooms and find
the remnants of our love in the debris.

Your perfume lingers on, a vile charade.
A stack of letters, yellowed now with age;
inscriptions of the promises we made
now only empty words upon a page.

I place them in a box where no one sees
my broken heart amidst the memories.

An entry for the February round of "The Bard's Hall Contest" 
Prompt: Romantic poetry
Line Limit: None
Line Count: 14
Form: Shakespearean or English sonnet which consists of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter, a pattern in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.