Elegy for a Hollow Queen

Once beautiful, or so they said—
A bride in light, her eyes aglow.
Enough to capture a brilliant man,
Though brilliance fell through fragile hands.

She wore a mask of charm and grace,
But time revealed an empty space.
Smart enough, but hollow within,
A hollow queen in a crumbling crown.

Dreamed of joy and a life so grand,
Yet neither went the way she planned.
Unready for the trials she faced,
Bitterness consumed her grace.

Filled her home with barbed-edged words,
Her love a poison, thick and blurred.
A mother’s touch turned hard as stone,
And in her kingdom, all felt alone.

He broke beneath her cutting gaze,
A man worn down by endless days
Of battles fought without a sound—
'Till water took him, 'till he drowned.

Her daughter learned to hate the face
That never offered warmth or grace.
Her son grew brittle, cracked with pain,
A shattered soul caught in her reign.

A grieving sovereign of lost dreams,
Could never grasp what might have been.
In nursing home, with hollow eyes,
Met her end beneath gray skies.

Her cuts remain, both deep and raw,
Wounds that time can barely thaw.
And though I longed to flee, to part,
She left her imprint on my heart.

I, her child, left bruised and cold,
With scars too deep and dark to hold,
Still cry for her, though nothing lasts—
I left her ashes in the past.