The Exile’s Ascent
A boy of weathered sorrow treads the snow,
His breath a spectral hymn, his feet on fire,
Through peaks that claw the clouds where banshees go.
No hearth’s embrace, no kin to whisper low—
The wind’s sharp tongue recounts his nameless birth,
While ice, like Time, etches its cruel tableau
Upon the cliffs that cage this orphaned earth.
“O jagged sentinels,” he pleads, “unfold
The secret script your granite bosoms keep!
What phantom womb expelled me to the cold?
What stars conspired to lull my roots asleep?”
But stone breathes only echoes, old and deep,
A choir of frost that mourns without a sound;
His shadow stretches where the eagles sweep,
A frail black stitch between the lost and found.
Three suns he climbs, each step a trembling vow,
His palms raw psalms against the rock’s contempt,
While memories—like wolves—circle and prowl,
Half-heard lullabies in dusk’s attempt.
A locket grips his chest, its silver dreamt
To hold some face, some trace of tender grace,
Yet blank as snow-blind mirrors, it exempts
No truth but hunger’s permanent embrace.
On the fourth dawn, a cataract of light
Reveals a grove where ancient pines conspire,
Their branches weaving labyrinths of night,
Their roots entwined with corpses’ last desire.
There, in the glade, a specter by a pyre—
A woman’s form, all ash and trembling mist—
Extends a hand where flickers dying fire:
“Child of the veiled moon, why do you persist?”
“Who names me mother in this barren air?”
The wraith intones, her voice a shattered flute.
“Your cradle was a wound, your lullabies despair,
The midwife Silence, swaddled in dispute.
Turn back—the summit’s crown is destitute,
A throne of glass that fractures every wing.
All exiles kneel where answers dilute
To mirrors showing nothing but their sting.”
Yet on he fights, her warning drowned in gales,
The locket’s void now heavier than lead,
While through his veins a stranger’s blood prevails,
Compelling him toward visions forged in dread.
At last, the apex—blackened, vast, and dead—
Unfurls its void above the world’s sharp spine.
No angels chant, no parent’s face is shed—
Just endless white, the sun’s relentless shrine.
He lifts the locket to the sterile glare,
Its vacant face now glinting with a lie,
And sees his own eyes, twin abysses there,
Reflecting skies that neither live nor die.
The truth, at last, ignites a barren cry:
To be unmade is every orphan’s creed.
No past to claim, no future to defy—
Exile is not a place, but all we bleed.
The mountain shudders, wraps him in its shroud,
A bridegroom welcomed by the Arctic bride.
His bones, like roots, embrace the freezing crowd,
His breath the final note of Time’s deride.
Below, the village clocks toll eventide,
Unmarked by one more absence in their score.
The locket sleeps where snow and stars collide—
A hollow reliquary locked no more.
Thus ends the seeker’s psalm, his flesh unmourned,
His pilgrimage dissolved in frost’s decree.
The peak retains what little it has learned:
That every climb is but a fall set free.
Let bards rename him “What-Will-Never-Be,”
A cautionary hymn for those who roam.
The wind, now fluent in his tragedy,
Recites it nightly to the orphans’ foam.
