The Ballad of Broken Strings and Silent Blooms

He stumbles on a gate of thorn, entwined with ivy’s cursive hand,
A cipher carved in lichen-stone: *“To seekers, tread with care.”*
Beyond, a garden breathes in hues no mortal tongue could name—
A tapestry of twilight blooms, a symphony of air.

And there she stands, where jasmine veils the statues of the lost,
Lirael, whose voice is spring’s first sigh, whose hands are dusk’s soft clay.
Her eyes, twin pools of quicksilver, reflect the stars’ retreat—
A keeper of the silent grove, where truth and lies hold sway.

*“What phantom haunts these petals?”* he asks, his voice a fractured strain.
*“What dirge do these roses murmur, as their thorns drink deep the dew?”*
She turns, a leaf on autumn’s breath, her laughter bittersweet:
*“The garden sings what hearts dare not—it plays the soul’s residue.”*

By day, he plucks his rusted strings, reviving notes long buried;
The lilies lean, the willows weep, the fountains hum in time.
Her fingers trace the aria’s arc, his rhythms raw and weathered—
Two solitudes entwined in chords, a dance without a rhyme.

Yet in the crypt of eventide, when shadows gnaw the edges,
She fades like mist on sunlit glass, her form to moonlight thinned.
*“Why vanish when the nightingale begins its mournful aria?”*
*“The garden’s truth,”* she murmurs, *“is a requiem for the wind.”*

He delves the labyrinth’s core, where roots clutch ancient scrolls,
Deciphering the garden’s creed in ink of crushed midnight:
*“To love the keeper is to thirst where no spring ever flows—
Her pulse is bound to petals; her breath, the blight’s delight.”*

One eve, as wisteria wept and the pond held stars like secrets,
He clasped her wrist—a fleeting warmth—and pled in trembling tones:
*“Let us flee where clocks are stilled, where walls do not conspire!”*
Her kiss, a phantom’s whisper: *“I am thorn, and soil, and bones.”*

Beneath the oak where vows once roosted, now a hollowed shrine,
He finds her gown of petals frayed, her hair a nest of thorns.
The garden wails in dissonance; the roses bleed to black.
Her voice, a ghostly lullaby: *“The truth, once reaped, returns.”*

He strums a dirge on splintered wood, his tears the final rain,
As stone by stone, the garden crumbles—its heart too frail to bind.
Where lilies drank the sun’s last gold, now shards of memory linger—
A vagabond, a silent lute, and footsteps left behind.

The road now drinks his shadow, as the dawn erases all,
Yet in his wake, a single bloom defies the barren miles—
A poppy, crimson as her lips, that wilts without a sound,
Its stem inscribed with glyphs unseen: *“Some truths are tombs, not trials.”*