Ashen Verses in the Temple’s Breath
A temple stands where shadows learn to weep—
Its columns claw the sky like ribs of gods
Long strangled by the twilight’s ashen sweep.
Here, through the cracks where time has gnawed its name,
A youth, whose quill once danced with liquid fire,
Now treads with steps that whisper of the damned,
His soul a wick burned low by fate’s dire pyre.
They called him bard, but war had stripped the title bare—
His ballads, once the pulse of spring’s first blush,
Now curdle in the air like orphaned screams
Where cannon smoke devours the thrush’s hush.
Yet in his breast, a quieter war convened:
A love, forbidden as the moth to flame,
For her, whose voice could mend the fractured dawn—
A maiden sworn to winds he could not name.
Her eyes were twin lagoons of tranquil dusk,
Her hair, a storm of autumn’s last repose;
She dwelled within the temple’s crumbling heart,
A vestal of the blooms that dare not close.
“Why weave your verses into shrouds?” she asked,
Her fingers brushing parchment stained with rue,
“The world is deaf to elegies,” she sighed,
“Yet here, your words still tremble… half-true.”
He knelt, the curse within his veins grown cold—
A serpent fed on ink and orphaned cries.
“They say my stanzas summon phantoms grim,
That every stanza births a soul’s demise.
But you, who tend the roses in this crypt,
Who breathe where even light retreats, afraid…
Tell me to hush this poison, and I shall—
Let silence be the tomb where I am laid.”
She laughed—a sound like rivulets in drought—
And pressed a petal to his ink-stained wrist.
“Your curse is but a mirror to your gift:
To die, or live, is neither kind nor just.
But see the siege-lights gnaw the horizon’s rim—
They’ll storm these stones by night’s malignant breath.
What use your silence, when the guns decree
That love alone must duel with death?”
The truth hung raw, a carcass stripped of guise:
Beyond the gate, the iron horde advanced,
Their banners rabid with the moon’s cold sheen,
Their blades unsheathed where hope had once enhanced.
The poet grasped her palm—a fragile script—
And felt the curse writhe, eager to be spent.
“Then let me trade this blighted tongue,” he vowed,
“For one pure hour where your heart may lament.”
They climbed the altar, slick with ancient tears,
Where saints in frescoes wept with crumbling lips.
He laid his scrolls, their verses ripe with doom,
Beneath her feet like doomed and listing ships.
“The rite demands a psalm not forged in breath,”
She murmured, “but in blood’s unyielding toll.
To shield this sanctuary, you must merge
Your voice’s shadow with the temple’s soul.”
He nodded, quill now dagger in his grip,
And carved the hymn into his aching flesh—
Each glyph a dirge, each stanza scarlet script,
A symphony of wounds both grave and fresh.
The walls inhaled his sacrifice, stone lungs
Distending with the echoes of his pain,
As spectral strings throbbed through the crawling air
And shadows coiled to form a dark refrain.
Outside, the marching wolves of steel and hate
Faltered as the ground began to croon—
The temple pulsed, a heart reborn in wrath,
Its every brick baptized in tyrants’ ruin.
Vines, like vengeance, sprouted from the earth,
And dragged the warlords down to choking graves,
While every bloom the maiden nurtured, bloomed
Thorns that strangled breath from windpipes of the knaves.
But in that sanctum where the pact was sealed,
The poet swayed, his life-ink draining swift.
She cradled him, her tears like liquid pearl,
Each drop a eulogy for love’s last rift.
“You’ve turned your curse to cradle,” she confessed,
“Yet I, who begged no martyr’s pyre be lit,
Must now inherit dawn’s untainted page—
A world your silence sculpted…
……….
…………
……………
And I, its prisoner,
Am doomed to read your verses in the mist.”
His breath, a final stanza, left his lips—
A sigh that stirred the dust of ageless floors.
The temple, sated, sank into the hills,
Its every stone a tablet to his cause.
She, left alone with petals and the void,
Now tends the blooms that drink from memory’s stream,
Their roots entwined with ballads none may hear—
A poet’s love, preserved in war’s mute scream.
Thus ends the tale in ash and shivered light,
Where glory’s name is but a dirge’s lie,
And every laurel pressed on battle-brows
Withers where true sacrifice dared defy.
The temple sleeps, its secret veiled in time,
A cairn for hearts that war could not estrange—
And in the wind, the maiden’s lullaby…
A poet’s curse, transformed to love’s
……………
………………
……………………
…….strange,
………………eternal
…………………………change.
“`
