ROMANCE Poem: Hymn for the Unchosen, by Gabriella Niles-Ewen

I came to him like Persephone –
A bloom half-rooted in the Underworld,
Hands dusted with the dark of longing –
He, the sun I mistook for salvation.
But I was not the first.

The pedestal bore another’s weight
Long before I climbed its slick, slanted edge.
Her name still sweetens his every silence.
She is the portrait in the locket,
The locked door in the house I now haunt.

She lingers in his laughter – uninvited,
Yet never told to leave.
I play the shadow bride,
Silent at their altar of old jokes,
Fingers trembling around cups he once filled for her.

I sip her ghost from every glass.
She does not see me –
Or worse, she does.
And when she does, I am madness:
A wild-eyed echo in the hallway,
A misstep, a flaw, a storm too soon.

She smiles like I am fiction.
He soothes me like I am overreacting.
And I, in truth,
Am just unfinished.
Their past is a chapel lit in amber.

I kneel outside, cold in the dusk,
Unwelcome in his prayers,
Yet ever in his confession.
How cruel, to be second – a sequel
To a story still half-lived.

A name less sacred,
A touch less known.
And still, I love him.
Still, I try.

A vase beside the broken statue,
Aching to be enough
In a gallery built for her.