An Excerpt from the Book of Pain

Something old, seen anew.
Think nothing of it; the time is past, I simply found it quaint:

It is a strange fate, to endure the sufferings of a "broken" heart: to continue to sit and eat your breakfast in the mornings, to enjoy the many amusements and company of friends, to live each day, as always, as never before anything had changed- but to do all this and feel that each pleasure rings a little more hollow; as though the blissful purity of such enjoyments, and trivial matters, had been extracted. It is as though a shadow had settled on and swallowed what makes such little things grand, and the greatest: empty. To live with a heart that beats erratically; with a ghost for an echo of your own palpitations; a fractured mirror to receive a warm embrace, and at night; to sleep most wakefully- woefully- with hot lurid tears and perspiration like the throes of passion set to ravish the occupant who finds no home.
   It is a terrible fate: a broken heart- where even the most meaningful consolations only serve to sever the chords that free the torrent that follows: to engage the self-deceiving sympathies and render one lost in oblivious contemplation, melancholy, and hurt.