Does the most beautiful, most touching, most heartbreaking pieces of literature not come from infatuations, from heartbreaks arising from unrequited love?

We’ve often heard too much about how true love comes after infatuation fades; how the sensation is different from one that of constant ecstasy, desire, fantasy and melancholy, to that of one just of peace; something where you can stand by that person, and not have your heart beating all the time, yet still know that you long to hold the person, to tell the person something, and that you cherish memories and that you anticipate times to come with the person.

While the latter seems a lot more idealistic, a lot better, it is the former that garners more attraction.

Do poets and songwriters not talk about their love in the forms of infatuations, and unrequited love arising from crushes, where it is impossible to forget every smile, every word that you hear, every breathe that you pick and every moment that you spend?

Isn’t it a whole lot more thrilling than having a “stable” love relationship?

And isn’t infatuation a stage everyone goes through?

While not to deny, there have been pieces of poetry that attempt to draw allusions to the “real” love, I find their efforts to reach out to the depths and true complications and emotions of love, and draw away from the whines and cries of crushes, utterly superficial.

There was once an effort to draw a juxtaposition between Robert Burn’s “my love is like a red red rose” and some other poem talking about true love. I can’t remember what it is, except that it drew references to imagery like the sea, sand, and whatnot. Let us not comment on the poor commentary and analysis and instead focus on the poems itself and derive out own opinions and interpretation.

Which one are you more likely to empathize with?

Unless you’re a cyborg, your answer to that rhetorical question MUST be Burn’s poem.

It is impossible for you to connect with something that talks about something that you have NOT experienced, over things like puppy love, heartbreak, unrequited love, no matter how “superficial” we may brand it to be.

And this is something that songs exploit. They talk excessively about unrequited love and heartbreak; list me one sad song that is not about the above (well removing the songs about death and musical eulogies from our consideration).

(well I’ve been trying to write prose and poetry about unrequited love and heartbreak; but I think nothings beats the real experience itself; there’s a reason why only more mature people can succeed in touching our hearts.)

And that’s the reason why my heart got struck by Kris Allen’s cover of Apologize yesterday.

And that’s why his version of Heartless is so heartbreaking, why Check Yes Juliet is so rebel-making, high and ecstasy-filled; why Collide is one of the best songs ever, why we all love to self-indulge in a piece of love every time, knowing deep in our hearts that we are still human despite buying iPhones when people on the other face of the globe, or rather right at your doorstep, are dying.

And boy is writing hopeful love stories hard when you’ve listened to and written so much heartbreak.

**

I don’t know how long I’ve been waiting.

The moon’s perfect, brighter than light, rounder than itself, smoother than thy skin, paler than hopelessness.

The stars are shining down on us, like a million shattered fragments of beautiful gems, of precious shrapnel, yet piercing of shattered hope.

It’s the breeze we’re missing; the once silently, romantically enthusiastic gale that would once blow across our warm supple faces as we looked on in the horizon, confident the sun would never rise again.

But tonight it isn’t here; perhaps you’ve taken the wind with you, for me to silently suffer or enjoy this callous solitude.

But I’ll stay on to wait, just in case.