The Isle of Shattered Mirrors
Where frosted waves compose their lullabies,
There stood a soul in tattered silks enshrined,
A woman carved by sorrows unconfined.
Her eyes, twin pools of tempests long suppressed,
Held whispers of a heart that knew no rest.
The island’s breath, a dirge of salt and pine,
Enwrapped her form like ivy round a shrine.
Beneath the moon’s cold, ever-watchful gaze,
She traced the paths of long-forgotten days.
A locket rusted, clutched in trembling hand,
Contained a face she could no longer stand—
A portrait smudged by tears and endless years,
A ghost that laughed at all her silent fears.
“Oh, fleeting dream,” she sighed to vacant air,
“Why cling to shadows when the light’s not there?”
But lo! One eve, as tides began to swell,
A ship emerged from where the mists dispel.
Its sails, like phantoms, glimmered silver-bright,
A specter forged from moonbeam and twilight.
A stranger stepped ashore with muted grace,
His visage veiled, yet familiar as her face.
No words he spoke, but in his shadowed glance,
She glimpsed the echoes of a lost romance.
“What trick of fate,” she breathed, “has brought thee here?
A mirror to my grief, a ghost severe?”
He raised a hand—a gesture soft, yet dire—
And kindled in her breast a forbidden fire.
“I am the dream,” he murmured, “you let slip,
The song unborn upon your trembling lip.
The isle you tread is but your prison’s shell;
Break free, and dare to bid your past farewell.”
Through tangled woods where shadows writhed and hissed,
They wandered, bound by vows of amethyst.
He showed her caves where starlight pooled like wine,
And glades where time itself seemed to unwind.
With every step, her chains began to crack,
Yet dread coiled deep—a serpent at her back.
“What price,” she asked, “does such enchantment claim?
Can dreams outrun the void that bears my name?”
He smiled, a curve of moonlight on the sea,
“The price is but the truth you flee from me.
Your heart, though scarred, still beats beneath the frost—
To reclaim it, all illusions must be lost.”
She trembled, torn between the ache to stay
And shadows calling her to fade away.
But as dawn bled across the ashen sky,
The stranger’s form began to liquefy.
“Wait!” she cried, “Do not dissolve to air!
What of the love you swore for me to bear?”
His voice, a wisp, replied, “Dear heart, behold—
The dream was but a tale your sorrows told.
The isle, the ship, the face you thought you knew…
Were mirrors to the pain that birthed you.”
And there, beneath the crumbling vault of morn,
She stood alone, her fragile spirit shorn.
The locket lay unclasped within her palm,
Its hollow face now eerily calm.
The waves advanced with jeers of cold delight,
To claim the shards of her eternal night.
No dirge was sung, no stone marked where she fell—
The sea, the shore, forgot her mortal shell.
Yet sometimes, when the moon is thin and frail,
A sigh is heard above the tempest’s wail.
A figure glides where foam and shadows merge,
Still clutching to the edges of a dirge.
And those who dare to heed the ocean’s lore
Know dreams and truth are tides on sorrow’s shore—
For mirrors break, and hearts, once torn, resign…
But echoes of her weep in every brine.
