The Bridge of Rain and Echoes

He pauses where the river’s throat doth moan,
A liquid mirror of the blood he’s sown,
And gazes through the mist-veiled, hollow air,
As if the fog might grant a ghost’s repaire.
But lo! A figure, draped in twilight’s veil,
Emerges where the raindrops weep their tale—
A woman’s form, her face obscured by night,
Yet framed by hands that tremble, porcelain-white.

“Good sir,” she calls, her voice a silver chime,
“What brings thee here, where time forgets to climb?”
The soldier starts, for in her tone he hears
The echo of a song from vanished years.
“I seek a path,” he murmurs, low and grim,
“To leave behind the spectres haunting him.
But who art thou, to walk this bridge alone,
Where neither sun nor stars their grace have shown?”

She steps aslant, her gown a ripple’s sigh,
“A keeper of the tales that travelers cry.
I wait for those who bear the weight of chains,
Whose souls are etched with war’s unyielding stains.”
Her words, like ivy, coil around his chest,
And pull the shards of sorrow from his breast.
“Then speak my doom,” he rasps, “or speak my cure,
For life’s a wound that bleeds without a suture.”

A pause—the rain grows still, as though the earth
Holds breath to hear what fate this tryst will birth.
“Three nights ago,” she breathes, “beneath this rain,
A youth knelt here, consumed by mortal pain.
He clutched a locket, cold against his palm,
And whispered vows no mercy could embalm.
His eyes… they mirrored thine, though dimmed by dread—
Tell me, O soldier, dost thou know the dead?”

The locket’s name hangs heavy in the mist—
A brother’s face, by treachery dismissed.
“He fell,” the soldier groans, “by my command,
A stray shot fired by this accursed hand.
I sought his form amidst the cannon’s roar,
But found the locket where his heart once bore.
And here it rests—” he grips the chain, unspun,
“A relic of the sin I cannot shun.”

The woman lifts her veil—her visage gleams,
A mirror of the youth from blood-soaked dreams.
“I am his shadow, bound to this stone arch,
To meet the hand that left him cold and parched.
Yet blame not fate, nor weep for deeds undone,
For love once bloomed where now there lies none.
He bade me wait, to grant thee this last token—”
She presses in his palm a vow unbroken:

A letter, sealed with wax of crimson hue,
Where ink confesses what the world ne’er knew.
“He loved thee not as kin, but as the dawn
Loves twilight—hopeless, yet still clinging on.
This bridge, his chosen altar to repent,
Where thy return and reckoning intersect.”
The soldier’s tears now merge with heaven’s cry,
As truths, like serpents, strangle his reply.

“Then take my soul,” he pleads, “to quench his thirst,
For I am damned, by grief and guilt accurst!”
She smiles, a crescent sharp with sorrow’s edge,
“Thy penance is to bear the oath’s last pledge:
To walk beyond this bridge, yet never flee
The ghost of him who loved thee more than thee.”

A flash—the locket plummets to the stream,
A golden ember lost to sorrow’s gleam.
The woman fades, her essence twined with rain,
While silence swallows echoes of their pain.
Alone, the soldier stands, his heart a pyre,
As dawn’s first light ignites the funeral pyre
Of hopes once nursed in innocence’s embrace—
The bridge remains. The rain erases trace.

Years pass, they say, though time here dares not tread;
The river guards the secrets of the dead.
And on nights steeped in storm, two phantoms meet—
One cloaked in ash, the other in defeat.
They speak no words, for grief hath stripped their tongue,
Yet in the rain, a brother’s hymn is sung:
A ballad of love’s price, of trust’s decay,
And souls entwined where shadows hold their sway.

Thus ends the tale the bridge and rain compose,
A symphony of loss the heavens chose.
For mortal hearts, though valiant in their beat,
Are but frail drums that tempests soon defeat.
And love, once kindled, may to embers turn,
Yet in the ash, the ache of absence burns—
A truth etched deep where bridges span the void,
And rain becomes the tears we long avoided.