The Mariner’s Lament: A Secret in the Petal’s Keep
A mariner, by tempests scourged and thin,
Did tread the shore where shadows clawed the night,
His heart a compass skewed by grief within.
The sea, once bride, now hissed with foamy spite,
And whispered of a grove he dared not win—
A garden veiled where childhood’s ghosts took form,
Beyond the reach of reason, safe from storm.
There, in the days when youth was honey-sweet,
He’d knelt beside a sister, fair and frail,
Where roses wove their crowns above their feet,
And time dissolved like dew along the vale.
Her laughter rang, a chime in summer’s heat,
While he, the elder, swore no gale would sail
To sever bonds no ocean could untie—
A vow now drowned where hollow starfish lie.
One dusk, she led him past the ivy’s veil
To where a stone, moss-crowned and long forgot,
Hid roots that clutched a secret, wan and pale.
“Beneath,” she breathed, “there lies what time leaves not.”
But thunder growled; he fled, too proud to quail,
And left her plea to wither in the rot.
Her face, a fading portrait in the rain,
Would haunt the tides that bore him home again.
Years spun their webs of salt and splintered wood;
Her letters ceased, as silent as the grave.
He charted waves, where phantom sirens stood,
And drank the dark that every wrecked soul craves.
Yet through the squalls, one memory withstood:
The garden’s call, a siren none could brave,
Where truths lay buried, sharp as coral bone—
A riddle sealed in earth, yet never known.
Returned at last, though not by will of hand,
But cast ashore where fate’s cold fingers pried,
He stumbled through the thorns that scarred the land,
Each step a dirge for dreams the tides denied.
The garden gasped, a crone whose veins were sand,
Its petals ash, its once-green heart defied.
There, ‘neath the stone, a locket tarnished lay,
Its hinge decayed, its chain the rust’s dull prey.
With trembling palms, he cradled Time’s betrayed,
And read the script, once gold, now ghostly white:
“To brother mine, though storms may leave you frayed,
This garden holds my love’s eternal light.
When fever’s chains upon my frail frame weighed,
I carved my farewell here, where day meets night.
Forgive the silence—waves stole my last breath,
Yet here I wait, in love that conquers death.”
The locket held a curl of chestnut hair,
A relic of the dawn he’d turned to flee.
The sea’s wail fused with his despairing prayer
As winds exhumed the past’s cruel irony.
He clutched the token, drowned in arid air,
While shadows danced their morbid revelry,
And knew, too late, the cost of journeys vast—
The hearth he’d sought had been the first he’d passed.
The cliffs roared condemnation to the skies
As waves advanced, their maws agape and wide.
He kissed the locket, closed his burning eyes,
And stepped where currents claimed their hollow bride.
The garden watched, its thorns his sole allies,
As depths embraced the truth he could not hide.
And there, where once two children’s vows were spun,
The sea, the stone, the sister—all were one.
