The Bridge of Shattered Rain

“What truth,” she asks the wind, “lies veiled in storm’s disguise?
What ledger holds the sum of all my fractured cries?”
No answer stirs the air but echoes of demise—
A child’s laughter lost, a friend’s unshuttered eyes.
The bridge, a gothic arch o’er rivers swift and black,
Groans like a wounded beast beneath her burdened back,
Its stones, once firm as vows, now cracked along their track,
As shadows coil and hiss of truths she dare not lack.

Three nights ago, a letter smudged with ash and fear
Had come to her cold hands, its script both strange and dear:
“Seek where the ravens guard the gate of yesteryear,
And walk the path where drowned men sell what they revere.”
No seal, no name—yet in the curves of every line,
She traced the hand of one she’d mourned as fate’s design,
A voice once stilled by time now murmuring, “Be mine—
Unknot the threads that bind your soul to sorrow’s twine.”

Through fen and fog she’d marched, past villages undone,
Where windows glared like skulls beneath the absent sun,
And farmers’ bones lay scattered where the plague had run,
Their fleshless fingers clutching charms that spared none.
She’d braved the marshland’s breath, its vapors thick with woe,
Where will-o’-wisps enticed with promises they’d strow,
Till here, at last, the bridge’s arch loomed row on row,
A threshold to the truth no living soul should know.

The river churns below, a chorus of the damned,
Their ballads choked in eddies, half-remembered, banned.
One step—the bridge’s spine creaks warnings unmanned;
Two steps—the rain turns sharp as teeth, her vision spanned.
A shape emerges now, a cloaked and faceless form,
Its presence like the lull between the calm and storm:
“Turn back,” it intones, “lest truth become your norm—
For what you seek will leave your spirit raw and torn.”

“I’ll barter breath for answers,” she declares, her voice
A blade unsheathed in tempests, forged in desperate choice.
The specter drifts, its hooded face devoid of poise,
And points a bony finger where the waters hoist
A skiff of rotted wood, its hull with algae scaled,
Its oarsman draped in mist, his essence long derailed.
“The Ferryman demands a toll,” the wraith exhales,
“Not coin, nor blood, but tales of how your courage failed.”

She climbs aboard the craft that reeks of brine and years,
The oarsman’s hollow gaze confirming ancient fears.
The river wails its dirge as banks dissolve in tears,
And spectral hands arise to clutch the vessel’s bier.
“Now speak,” the boatman croaks, “of moments you betrayed—
The trust you snapped like twigs, the debts you never paid.”
Her tongue, though leaden, spills the secrets she’d withheld:
The friend she’d wronged for pride, the love she’d quashed and quelled.

The skiff grinds on a shore where willows weep and twist,
Their leaves inscribed with names the world has long dismissed.
Before her, gates of thorn and iron coalesce,
Their spikes adorned with shards of mirrors that oppress.
Each fragment holds a face—a mother’s last reproach,
A brother’s smile dimmed by her betrayal’s broach—
“Enter,” hisses wind through brambles that encroach,
“And meet the truth you’ve mortgaged heart and mind to approach.”

Beyond the gates, a hall of smoke and shattered light,
Where phantoms weave the air with tapestries of blight.
At center stands a throne of bones and blighted night,
And there—oh, there—the figure draped in stolen sight:
The twin she’d lost to fate’s caprice, her mirror, guide,
Now crowned with thorns of time, her aura death-denied.
“You came,” the twin intones, her voice a hollow tide,
“To learn what chains your soul to shadows where you bide.”

“I sought to mend the rift,” the living sister cries,
“To resurrect the bond that storm and stone denied!”
The twin ascends, her form a flicker, amplified:
“You sought to flee the guilt that festered where I died.
That day beneath the oak, when lightning split the air,
You chose your path—not chance—that led me to despair.
Your hand let loose the branch that fell to crush me there—
An act your heart concealed with lies you’ve learned to wear.”

The rain outside the hall becomes a deafening roar,
As truth’s blade plunges deep into her fractured core.
She falls, her knees embraced by cold mosaic floor,
While visions of that fatal hour surge and pour:
The storm, the argument, her rage-fed spiteful deed—
The branch she struck in wrath, her sister’s final plead.
No act of God—her hand had sown the lethal seed,
And all these years, her grief a mask for poison’s creed.

The twin extends a hand, not flesh but shards of glass,
“Now join me in this realm where pretenses amass.
Here, in the womb of truth, no shadows may pass—
Eternity shall be your tutor, pain your class.”
But trembling, she recoils from that spectral grasp,
Her soul not yet resigned to truth’s unflinching clasp.
“I’ll bear the weight,” she vows, “but let my breath still rasp—
To mend what’s left above, though tethered to this hasp.”

A laugh like breaking ice resounds through vaulted dark.
“You think your penance now can re-ignite the spark?
The bridge awaits your return—but mark this stark:
Each step shall bleed the lies you’ve buried in the ark.”
The throne, the twin, the hall dissolve to ashen rain,
And suddenly she’s back where all began—again,
The bridge’s stones now serpents coiling with her pain,
The river’s roar the chorus of the lives she’s slain.

She staggers, each footfall a martyr’s bitter march,
The truth a canker rooted where her heart’s left parched.
No absolution blooms, no solace to embarch—
Just knowledge, raw and fanged, that leaves her soul outmarched.
The rail, slick with despair, invites her final flight;
Below, the jaws of truth gnash eager for their rite.
One breath—the world contracts to pinpricks of fading light—
Then darkness, deep and vast, consumes the bridge’s height.

Dawn finds the river calm, the rain reduced to mist,
The bridge an empty stage where shadows once persist.
A single glove remains, ensnared by iron’s wrist,
While far below, the truth and lie in current twist.
And somewhere, in the void between the said and meant,
A sister’s voice intones the epitaph unkempt:
“All seekers of the truth beware the path you’ve dreamt—
For light, once loosed, may rend the soul it once exempt.”