The Knight’s Lament Beneath a Treacherous Star
Where no root clings, no whispered prayer ascends—
A knight in armor, blackened as crow’s wing,
Treads sands that coil like serpents, murmuring.
His helm, a hollowed moon, bears crests erased,
His shield a mirror where no face is traced.
Ten thousand days have gnawed his shadow thin,
Yet still he walks where no sun dares begin,
Chased by the specter of a vow undone,
A brother’s oath sworn cold beneath the sun.
(They stood as twins of oak in youth’s green court,
Blades crossed in laughter, hearts a single fort—
Till glory’s thirst, like poison in the wine,
Turned kinship’s gold to dust, and love to brine.)
Now here, where even ghosts forget their names,
He tracks the star that slew him with its flames—
Not Venus’ balm, nor Mars’ tempestuous glare,
But one pale eye that floats in judgment’s air.
It pulsed above their final battleground,
Where steel first wept the blood of treason found:
His comrade’s sword, once pledged to guard his spine,
Pierced through the dark—a serpent’s silver line.
*“Why kneel to crowns? Why serve a withered throne?”*
The traitor hissed, *“This star shall be our own!”*
But when the knight, gut-spilled and gasping, cried,
The star burned mute. The friend turned, moon-eyed,
And left him meat for wolves. Yet death declined,
Bound him to wander, curse and corpus twined.
Three ages hence, he treads this ashen mire,
His wound a second mouth that breathes no fire,
His scabbard filled with scorpions, his steed
Long since reduced to bones that plead and bleed.
The star still leads him—cruel, ambiguous guide—
Its light a thread through which all truths deride.
*“Come home,”* it hums in frequencies of frost,
*“The gate stands wide where loyal hearts are lost.”*
He dreams in fevered intervals of sleep
Of citadels that in the deep sands keep
Their spires drowned, of voices choked in silt,
Of love rotted to lace, of honor spilt
Like oil on tides. Each step cracks ancient floors
Where empires kneel, and time itself implores:
*“Lay down your arms; let silence be your shroud.”*
Yet on he stalks, a man both corpse and cloud.
At last, beneath the star’s lidless regard,
He halts. The air hangs stiff as a bowstring’s guard.
A figure forms—a silhouette of youth
Wearing the face that damned him, slick with truth.
No armor masks the eyes that once he knew,
Now hollowed sockets weeping silver dew.
*“Forgive,”* it breathes, but in the traitor’s tone—
A voice of hooks and honey, flesh and stone.
The knight’s blade leaps, a viper stripped of choice,
And cleaves the shade—which shrieks with his own voice.
The vision folds. The star, convulsing, dies,
Its final light a gasp of lullabies.
Down crashes night, eternal and absolved,
The desert’s lungs collapse, the void dissolved.
No ballads name this end. No stones attest
Where faith and venom share the same cold breast.
Only the wind, that thief of epitaphs,
Carves through the dust one brief, unmarked epitaph:
*Here rots the fool who fed his heart to trust,*
*Who learned that stars are kin to mortal dust,*
*That love, once split, breeds twins—one blooms, one burns—*
*And even ghosts can perish when they turn.*
