The Exile’s Return

The isle, a siren veiled in mist and lore,
Receives him not with solace, but a leer—
Its cliffs like talons tearing at the core
Of skies that weep in hues of bruise and fear.
No hearths await, no kin to clasp his hand,
Just echoes of a life once carved in sand.

Through cypress sentinels, their arms outstretched,
He treads the path where moonlight fears to dwell,
Each step a dirge for virtues death has etched
Upon his soul, now choked by sorrow’s swell.
Yet lo! A flicker in the fog’s embrace—
A cottage, frail as hope, with candlelight
That licks the panes like some remembered face,
And beckons him to breach the teeth of night.

Within, a figure draped in twilight’s hue
Spins thread to mend the tattered cloth of years,
Her hands, two ghosts that dance in silver dew,
Weave silence into tales his spirit hears.
“Come, wanderer,” she murmurs, voice a stream
That carves through stone, “what storm has cast thee here?
Thy scars outnumber stars—yet dost thou dream
Of shores where war’s black wings no longer veer?”

He halts, a statue forged from grief and shame,
Her question probing wounds no balm can soothe.
“I sought this isle to bury sword and name,
To let the waves devour my cannon’s tooth.
But in each rock, each wind that wails of home,
I hear the march of drums, the cannon’s roar—
A symphony that chains my soul to roam
This purgatory’s bleak and barren shore.”

Her loom stills. Embers crackle low, then rise
To paint her face with time’s unspoken toll—
A beauty weathered not by age, but skies,
Her eyes two wells where galaxies unroll.
“I too once fled a life by battle claimed,”
She breathes, “and built this refuge from the flood.
Yet exile’s wine, though bitter, leaves unnamed
The thirst for roots that drink the exile’s blood.”

Dawn’s fingers claw the horizon’s bleeding rim
As soldier and enigma trade their nights—
He, tales of trenches choked with death’s grim hymn;
She, ballads of an isle that feeds on lights.
Her name, she offers not, nor asks his own;
Their bond, a bridge of shadows, spans the deep
Where loneliness, that ancient, twin-born stone,
Is shouldered not in silence, but in sleep.

But hark! The tempest’s howl, the sea’s revolt—
A storm, like Fate’s own fist, besieges land.
The cottage quakes, the hearth’s last spark extols
The dying breath of warmth beneath its hand.
She grips his arm, her touch a brand of ice:
“The cliffs! They crumble where the sea-gods war—
This isle, a debtor paid with sacrifice,
Demands a life to mend its fractured core.”

No time to parse the riddle’s razor edge—
They flee through forests screaming in the gale,
Where branches snap like bones, and oath and pledge
Are drowned beneath the sky’s unyielding wail.
At cliff’s foul maw, she halts, her gaze aflame:
“One truth remains unspoke, though blood runs cold—
This isle and I are one, yet not the same…
I am its ghost, and you, the flesh it’s sold.”

The ground dissolves. He grasps her fading sleeve,
A tapestry of mist between his fists.
Her laughter, soft as graves, begins to weave
Through winds that steal the words from trembling lips:
“The exiled ever seek a kindred shore,
Yet every haven hides a silent blade—
Go, live and mourn, till memory’s no more,
For mercy’s price is here, in stone, repaid.”

She falls—or leaps—or melts into the storm,
A wraith consumed by ravenous abyss.
The soldier kneels, his heart a shattered form,
As dawn unveils the ocean’s mocking kiss.
No trace remains of cottage, loom, or lore,
Just waves that chant the anthem of the lost—
A hymn for those whom exile’s endless door
Swallows whole, then seals with frost.

Years march like prisoners, their chains of hours
Gnawing the cliffs to dust, the man to bone.
He tends a phantom hearth with phantom flowers,
His voice erased, his past no longer known.
Some say the isle still breathes, its lungs of stone
Inhaling souls who dare to flee the night—
But none recall the soldier’s face, now grown
To one more shadow in the cliff’s grim rite.

And when at last his scars outnumber years,
He lays upon the rock where she once fell,
The sea’s cold tongue to drink his final tears,
The gulls to shriek a crude, unending knell.
The waves, like judges, nod and then decree:
No epitaphs for those exile reclaims—
Just salt, and wind, and endless, nameless sea,
To grind his dust to whispers. Thus, he becomes
The isle’s next ghost, its hymn’s eternal hum.