He penned the golden dream with a broken heart

He wrote in the key of longing—
each word a clink of crystal, each chapter a dance with ruin.
To read Fitzgerald is to drink the bubbles first and feel the burn later.

He caught the glimmer of a nation's youth,
burnished it with beauty,
and then cracked it open to show the loneliness inside.

His men were dreamers with doomed ideals.
His women shimmered, sharp-edged and untouchable.
His prose moved like music—
slow, swelling, then sudden silence.

He gave us Gatsby, but he gave us himself too:
an artist always reaching, always rewriting,
always just one draft away from the masterpiece he already wrote.

For a brief, glittering moment, he was the voice of a generation.
And though the party ended, the echo still plays.

We wrote this for Scott.