The Orphan’s Lament: A Dirge of Thorn and Shadow
A boy of twelve, with threadbare name—Elias—trod where none dare pry.
The forest yawned, a maw of mist, its breath the dirge of centuries lost,
Each step he took, a whispered risk, through ferns that clutched like fingers crossed.
No kin but echoes filled his days, no cradle but the workhouse stone,
Yet in his fist, a locket lay—a mother’s face, half-known, half-sewn.
Its hinge, a riddle; chain, a snare—it led him where the pines conspired,
To solve the crypt of vacant air, to quench the ghost of longings fired.
The trees leaned close, their bark like scrolls inscribed with lichen’s silver hand,
Their branches creaked in tongues unrolled—a sermon none could understand.
But Elias, steeped in silence’ school, deciphered murmurs in the cold:
“Turn back, small wraith, this wood’s no fool—its truths are thorns, their weight, pure gold.”
Yet on he pressed, his pulse a drum that rivaled twilight’s muffled heart,
Past stones that bore no mark but scum, through thickets torn by centuries’ art.
A shape emerged—a cabin, slumped, its roof a sieve for starless dark,
Its door ajar, like jaws unclamped, exhaling tales of vanished sparks.
Inside, the dust had spun its shroud, a loom of gray on chair and shelf,
But on the wall, a portrait frowned—a woman’s eyes, his own, himself.
Her lips, a crack in time’s old vase, seemed poised to spill some long-dead plea,
While by her breast, the locket glowed—twin to the one he’d clutched in plea.
A floorboard screamed. A drawer, pried wide, coughed up a journal, bound in rue,
Its pages scarred by fevered scribe: “I walk the woods to find the true,
But oh, the mist, it breathes her name—my Clara, claimed by leaf and loam.
Beware the path where shadows aim—the forest’s love is exile’s home.”
The boy, unmoored, yet tethered tight, felt roots crawl up his shivering frame,
As if the walls drew breath to cite: “You are the heir of grief and flame.”
Outside, the wind unspooled a cry—a woman’s voice, both near and far,
That plucked the chords of lullabye, yet sharpened like a splintered star.
He followed, led by spectral sound, to where the brook bled black with night,
And there, beneath the yew’s grim crown, a figure wove from vapor’s light.
Her gown, the ash of autumn’s end; her hair, the smoke of memory’s pyre—
“My son,” she sighed, “the woods append what time devours in its maw.
I walked this path to cheat the grave, but roots became my rib, my law.”
The locket burned. The earth replied—a shudder climbed from core to crest,
As thickets twined to clasp his side, and moss surged up to seize his chest.
“You sought the truth,” the specter mourned, “now wear its crown of thorn and frost.
The forest’s children stay unborn—their souls the price of secrets lost.”
His throat filled with the taste of peat, his veins, the sap of ancient pleas,
As bark encased his fevered heat, and boughs embraced what none could seize.
The dawn, when came, found nothing there but yews that sighed in sorrow’s key,
And one fresh sapling, pale and fair, where Elias merged with mystery.
The locket? Oh, it gleams somewhere—half-buried where the shadows play,
A relic for some future heir lured by the woods’ deceitful say.
And when the moon hangs cracked and thin, some say his voice still braids the breeze,
A hymn of loss, forever pinned to roots that bind and truths that freeze.
