ELEGIAC: A SHATTERED SHADOW OF LOVE BY STEPHEN AYODELE AYINMODE

Can one wound yesterday and expect today to offer gentle healing?

Certainly not. Yet, you name it a game.

This fragile thing called love.

As though hearts were pieces to be moved, exchanged, or sacrificed without consequence.

But even Mother Nature teaches otherwise:

the slightest breeze rearranges the sceneries that define our days,,

even the quietest season can alter the course of our destinies.

To treat love as a game

is to invite untold stories of regret, disappointment, and sorrow unspoken.

Be wise. Retrace your steps.

For a love once struck does not return unscarred;

it dissolves into a fractured shadow,

one that lingers behind us, soft yet haunting.......

a testament to the blows we dealt

and the tenderness we dismissed.

Can you not see in his eyes

that his heart belongs to her?

He shared boundless days and nights with her,

and he cannot let go of the years of wedlock that held them apart.

Shine your face, stop dreaming,

and release what was never truly yours.

Do you not see the fallacy etched clearly upon the walls of your choices?

The more you attempt to decipher it,

the less you understand, for the universe ensures that what goes around

inevitably finds its way back.

Therefore, be wise enough to release the chase.

The diamond you seek in distant illusions

rests quietly within your reach.

Abandon the pursuit of mirages,

of hearts that were never yours to claim.

That heart belongs to another.

Stop chasing your own shadow.

© STEPHEN AYODELE AYINMODE

-Nigeria

This poem is a contemplative and cautionary elegy that warns against the dangers of treating love as a game and pursuing unrequited love. Through nature imagery and rhetorical questions, the poet urges the reader to let go of futile pursuits and recognize the scars of past loves, emphasizing that what is truly valuable is often within reach, rather than chasing illusions. The poem's somber tone and reflective language, characteristic of wisdom literature, advise the reader to release the chase and stop pursuing something that was never truly theirs.