Greetings Aetherius,
The war is won, and the victors rewarded. What follows are the poems of
the winners, including both the poems that tied for third place which
were surprisingly written by the same person.
I bid you read and enjoy
Sir Nuada Ryvoan, Knight of the Purple Rose


3rd place

I have loved you

I have loved you in my dreams,
where everything is not as it seems.
A place where reality is the illusion,
where the past cannot be undone.
I have loved you in my dreams,
a constant, aching love to the extreme.
Where you have loved me in return,
and reality is paled by the rays of the suns.

I have loved you in my heart,
a love so deep, from the very start.
A time when doubt was nonexistent,
when jealousy did not blur my vision.
I have loved you in my heart,
that the ache is forever etched a part.
A time when your love branded me so acutely,
imprinting you to myself completely.

I have loved you with intense passion,
a fiery wild love of unyielding affection.
In depth love of the purest kind,
that has taken control of my body, heart and mind.
I have loved you with intense passion,
through every passage of every season.
Extreme, undying love of clarity,
when everything in my vision was merged in unity.

I have loved you with immense devotion,
a loyalty that could not be broken.
Faithful to you to the very core,
so deeply, I could give no more.
I have loved you with immense devotion,
with every complete and possible emotion.
Devoted wholly with every fiber of my being,
you as my light when the night was blinding.

I have loved you enough to give you your freedom,
in hopes that the flight of choice would rebound.
That you would know the ache that I know,
where life is empty and filled with distressed sorrow.
I have loved you enough to give you your freedom,
yet I still feel your heart beating next to my own.
Like a magnet drawn toward the force of truth,
I fight the force to plead to come back to you.

I have loved you enough to watch you from afar,
knowing that we both live beneath the same glorious stars.
Keeping my life still devoted to you alone,
although my parting words were a deception, as was my tone.
I have loved you enough to watch you from afar,
until the ache takes hold and grips violently at my heart.
Hoping, waiting expectantly for the tide to transform,
for your love to find its way back to me, to come home.

I have loved you in this time of reality,
still just as strong and completely.
Where the past is the present and time has paused,
while I reminisce upon what once was.
I have loved you in this time of reality,
searching for a calm tranquility.
Yet my heart will not quiet the ache it holds,
until the day your love once again finds me to enfold.

Penned by my hand on the 12th of Ferinus, in the year 436 AD.