Farewell Beneath the Veil of Illusions

She paused where altar-stones, now moss-ensnared,
Once drank the wine of vows now turned to rust,
And touched a rose of frost, its petals bared
To night—a bloom of grief, of fractured trust.
“O Memory,” she murmured to the air,
“Thy mirror shows but fragments of the true.
Why stitch the shroud of days I cannot bear,
Yet veil the face I yearn to gaze into?”

No answer stirred the silence, thick as lead,
Save echoes of a lute’s forgotten song,
Till through a fissure in the vaulted red
There fell a single star, bright-burning, wrong.
It pulsed like hope long exiled from her breast,
A silver tear on destiny’s cold cheek,
And whispered, “Child of Sorrow, come and rest—
The past you mourn is but the future’s mystique.”

“Speak not in riddles, Phantom of the Gleam,”
She cried, her voice a shiver in the gloom,
“For I have walked the maze of Lethe’s stream,
And found no shore beyond this aching tomb.”
The star then swelled, its light a blade unkind,
And shaped a vision ‘midst the crumbling nave:
A knight in armor forged from mortal mind,
His face the sum of all her heart could crave.

“Belov’d!” The word escaped her like a wound,
As centuries of silence split in twain.
He turned, his eyes two pools where dreams were drowned,
And smiled—a sunbeam through a storm of pain.
“Thou liv’st?” She reached, but shadows clutched her wrist,
“Or art thou but the lantern of my lack?”
He sheathed his sword, its hilt by twilight kissed,
“Both less and more. I am the road… and the track.”

They stood as statues in that fractured shrine,
While star-fire wove a tapestry of lies—
A cottage by a sea where pines entwine,
A kiss beneath the blush of dawning skies.
“Come dwell with me,” he pled, his hand outstretched,
“In realms where clocks are strangled by the vine,
Where every stolen moment is retched
From time’s tight fist, and agony turns wine.”

Oh, how the tempter’s aria burned sweet!
Her soul, a moth, beat wings against the glass
Of reason’s cage. “What law forbids our meet?
What god decrees that beauty must not last?”
The temple groaned as if the stones might weep,
The star laughed low—a chime of shattered vows—
“Thy heart knows well this truth it dares not keep:
All love is but a shadow on the ploughs.”

Yet still she swayed, her essence torn asunder,
One foot in light, one in the abyss’s chill,
Till through the dream there crept a sound of thunder—
The clank of chains no mortal hand could mill.
She turned; the knight’s fair visage cracked like ice,
Revealing skulls where roses ought to bloom,
And all their promised Eden paid the price—
A desert howling with the wind’s bleak tune.

“Thou see’st,” the star hissed, guttering now, afraid,
“Thy choice is naught: to wake or to pretend.”
The wraith fell prostrate, by betrayal flayed,
“Then let me die, since every road must end.”
But as she spoke, the temple’s ancient tongue
(Runed stones that once sang hymns to joy’s decree)
Rose slow as smoke from where her sorrows sprung:
“To love the illusion is to set it free.”

She stood, a queen of ash and fractured grace,
And cupped the star now dimming in her palm.
“Farewell, sweet lie. I’ll not thy light disgrace
By clinging to what time and truth would maim.”
One breath—the specter kissed the fading spark,
One sigh—it died, its purpose now complete.
Dawn’s first cold blade pierced through the temple’s dark,
And where she knelt, lay but a shroud of sleet.

Thus ends the tale they whisper to the sea,
When waves claw cliffs and gulls dare not take wing:
The noblest hearts must choose what cannot be,
And heaven’s price is love’s eternal sting.
Beneath the star that never was a star,
In temples built on sand, by tears designed,
We chase the light that shows us what we are—
Brief flames that leave no shadow when they’ve shined.