Is it too much to ask for love in return for your own? To treat someone's heart like an insurance policy of sorts, it'll come in handy when hardship strikes? Only to watch the company go bankrupt, all your investment running into the ground.
Your castle being washed away by the hude tidal wave. One grain of sand indistinguishable from another. Not being able to tell which part was being swept away, and it was all over, in the blink of an eye.

It takes a second.
To erase ages.
To wipe it all out.

And still you manage not to feel clean. The black in the board remains, and you can chalk it up as much as you want, there will always be gaps in the white.
No purity, never purity.
The past peeks into your present, your future, always.
Waiting to come out of shadows to taunt you, not really bringing anything of significance back. Just faded, hazy memories. And disconnected dreams. While you sit, sit, sit. Spend your time staring at this and that, nothing-in-particular, because you have unlearned to focus.

You look, not really looking. You listen, not really listening. And when you die, it will be not-really-dying, because mortal existence does not count. Not when the essence is lost.

The essence. It made you live. Focus.

And now you stare.

At what?