Mourning Cursive - A Hemingway Romance

I try to write a happy romance, but the pages keep drowning. What begins in candlelight ends with a drink in silence, two glasses sweating on the table, one still half-full, with a lipstick kiss and no owner I draft an epic — love sewn tight across continents — but there’s always a telegram, a cough behind a closed door, a shadow stepping out into the snow. Someone always leaves, or dies in the end, and the ink runs like cheap wine across the paper. It’s not that I want it this way — but the truth gets in the way of the plot. The truth is heavy; it sinks faster than any happy ending can swim. I’ve read too many farewells, too many wars fought in living rooms between people who were once each other’s only safe place. For better or worse, I’m ruined. I don’t trust joy when it sits beside me; I keep waiting for it to stand up, button its coat, and vanish into the streetlight fog. I keep writing anyway, chasing a love that can outlive the final page — but every time I set down the pen, I hear the click of a lighter, the scrape of a chair on wood, and I know I’ve just written the part where they don’t come back. Every story read long enough Ends in death.