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you offered me the illusion of forever

I betrayed myself for the thought of you

painted dreams in phantom hues

chased whispers I mistook for clever

swallowed memories like broken glass

watched them cut, fade through, pass

gathered pieces of my scattered light

carved new paths through every breach

blossomed past your shadow’s reach

held my own hand through the night

built gardens where your dust had spread

became the love I once confessed

-安天美

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The first six lines tell a story of disillusionment. Someone offered a false promise of "forever," and the speaker acknowledges their role in believing it. The imagery grows increasingly painful - from soft "phantom hues" and "whispers" to the violent metaphor of swallowing "broken glass." It's like watching a dream shatter and feeling every sharp edge of that reality. There's also a shift from active to passive voice, suggesting a surrender to reality.

The poem unfolds through a series of vivid metaphors, each line revealing a different aspect of the disillusionment process:

• Creating idealised fantasies of love
• Pursuing intangible and elusive hopes
• Mistaking deception for truth
• Experiencing the painful consequences of self-deception

This first part of the piece beautifully explores not just loving wrongly, but the ways we actively participate in our own heartbreak through self-deception. The ending, with its imagery of cutting memories, implies a painful but necessary process of coming to terms with reality, gained at great emotional cost.

But the turning point comes with the second half to transform the narrative. Each line represents a step in healing:

• Collecting fragments of oneself
• Finding new directions
• Discovering strength in absence
• Learning self-comfort
• Building something new from destruction
• Finally recognising that true love begins with self-acceptance

This varied pattern creates a more natural flow, like someone finding their way step by step, rather than marching to a predictable beat. It is actally authentic to the emotional journey - healing isn't linear or perfectly structured. The ending couplet in both stanzas lands with particular strength because it returns to a clean rhyme after the intentional irregularity.

The most powerful nuance is in the contrast between the first and last lines. We begin with someone else's "illusion of forever" and end with the speaker "becoming what love confessed" - suggesting that authentic love is within, not in the false promises of another.

In essence, it's not just a poem about lost love, but about finding something more precious: the capacity to love oneself through and after devastation.

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<aside> <img src="/icons/backward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/backward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> A World of Contradictions

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<aside> <img src="/icons/forward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/forward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Between Earth & Stars: A Meditation on Bass Frequencies

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