The Bridge of Sundered Vows

Here, memory’s current flows both fierce and cold,
As rain, relentless scribe, etches her tale
On cheeks where living warmth once blushed, now old
As promises that rot where vows turn frail.
She pauses—not for breath, for breath’s a ghost—
But feels the ache where heartbeat used to thrash,
Recalls the night when oath and fate were crossed,
And two hands clasped what rain now drowns to ash.

*“By stone and star,”* they swore, *“no tide nor war,
Nor time’s sly teeth, shall sunder what we vow.”*
But war came shod in silence to their door,
Not swords, but silence, cleft the sacred bough.
He left, not with a banner’s haughty flare,
But as dusk leaves the day—no sound, no storm—
To serve a crown that fed on others’ despair,
While she, bound to the bridge, kept vigil warm.

Three springs she wore her patience like a veil,
Her letters sewn with hope’s diminishing thread,
Till word arrived—not ink, but iron mail—
*A soldier’s heart, they claimed, in foreign earth lay dead.*
Yet death, she learned, wears masks of cunning art:
No corpse returned, no grave to kneel and mourn,
Just rumors coiled like serpents round her heart—
*He breathed, they hissed, but honor was unborn.*

Beneath the bridge, the river’s twisted tongue
Sang ballads of a love by duty choked,
Of a man who walked where shadow-loyalties clung,
Whose new vows bled the old ones he’d invoked.
She sought him not in cities loud with guile,
Nor ports where sailors spat his altered name,
But here—where ghosts of pledges haunt the aisle—
She waits, as rain erodes her flesh to fame.

Tonight, the storm wears centuries’ despair,
Each droplet weighted with unspoken years,
When footsteps clench the stones—a stranger’s stare
Unknots the past, and hope’s sharp thorn appears.
A cloak of office, foreign crests embossed,
His face a map of scars and suns unknown,
Yet in his gaze, the flicker never lost—
The boy who swore by stars and bridge and stone.

*“You live,”* she breathes, her voice a shattered flute,
*“Yet dead to me since silence ate your voice.”*
He trembles, not from rain, but roots uprooted,
*“I swore to crowns… then choices killed my choice.
They called it duty—that sleek, venomous word—
To break our bond, to serve a stranger’s throne.
I carved my soul into a lie, interred
The man you loved beneath a name of stone.”*

The river rasps below, a throat of glass,
As truths, like knives, pare flesh from bone and creed.
*“You kept the bridge,”* he mourns, *“while I let pass
All oaths, to kneel where power sowed its seed.
My hands have built what your hands could not tear—
Walls around nations, doors you’ll never cross.
Exile’s the wage of men who trade their prayers
For thrones that bloom from betrayal’s albatross.”*

She steps—no, floats—toward his shadowed form,
Her fingers brushing air where cheeks once burned,
*“You are my exile too. Within this storm,
I died the hour your conscience overturned.
You think my vigil kept these stones alive?
I am the bridge’s breath, its curse, its cost—
A soul entombed where promises survive
As echoes. Touch me, love… and feel the frost.”*

His hand meets hers—a shock of phantom ice—
And through his veins her sorrow’s venom crawls.
The bridge, attuned to love’s old sacrifice,
Shudders as rain weeps through its crumbling walls.
*“I came to beg a pardon,”* he implores,
*“Or share the hell my choices etched in air.”*
*“Hell,”* laughs the wind, *“is what your silence pours
On roots you starved. No pardon. Only prayer.”*

And now the hour’s blade unsheathes its toll—
Dawn, gray and gelid, claws the eastern veil.
The soldier grips a locket, tarnished soul,
Her face inside worn ghostly, almost pale.
*“I cannot stay,”* he gasps, though feet are lead,
*“Nor bear you with me. All my roads are graves.”*
*“Then go,”* she smiles, *“but know the bridge you fled
Will haunt your shadow through each lie you craved.”*

He turns—the clank of chains unseen, unheard—
As sunrise stains the river’s face with blood.
She watches, carved in rain, no longer stirred
By mortal pulse or hope’s once-verdant bud.
The bridge, now keeper of her endless trance,
Absorbs her form, as moss absorbs a tear,
Until two pigeons, parting, briefly dance
Where vows once bound a love now severed, sere.

Years blur. The bridge still bends beneath the weight
Of lovers new, who carve brief vows in bark.
They sense, some claim, a presence desolate,
A sigh that braids with twilight’s fading arc.
And far from rain’s remorse, an aging knight
In foreign halls, hears rivers in his sleep—
A voice that weaves through every battle’s night,
*“You are the oath you broke. The ghost you keep.”*

So ends the tale the rain etches in stone—
Of exile chosen, exile borne, exile sown.