The Mariner’s Lament: A Betrayal in Bloom

He stumbled through the mist’s ethereal gauze,
His boots embalmed with kelp and shattered dreams,
Until a gate of rusted ironwork loomed—
A skeletal grin midst bracken-threaded streams.
Beyond it sprawled a garden, ripe with dusk,
Where roses bled their perfume to the air,
And lilies, pale as unrepented sins,
Swayed like mourners at a phantom’s prayer.

“O sanctuary!” he cried, his voice a crack
In reason’s dam. “What mercy bids me here?”
The garden breathed—a sigh of cloying musk—
And drew him deep, a moth to spectral cheer.
Vines clasped his wrists like lovers’ fevered hands,
Their thorns engraving vows upon his skin,
While shadows, thick as guilt, began to weave
A tapestry to drown the world within.

A figure emerged—a woman wrought of dusk,
Her hair a storm of ash and wilted grace,
Her eyes twin pools where hope went down to drown,
Her smile the edge of time’s unkindled mace.
“Rest, weary soul,” she whispered, voice a blade
Sheathed in silk. “This grove absolves all pain.
Drink from the spring that never quenches thirst,
And let my roses cleanse what storms profane.”

He drank—the water, sharp as Judas’ kiss,
Unspooled his veins to threads of liquid night.
The garden pulsed, its roots alive and cruel,
Feasting on the ache of borrowed light.
She watched him, still, her laughter like the creak
Of gallows-wood. “How sweetly men believe
That beauty masks not teeth behind the petals,
Or that a wounded hart won’t claw to grieve.”

Days bled to weeks, or perhaps mere heartbeats—
Time here was a riddle wrapped in thorns.
He named her “Savior,” “Siren,” “Soul’s Reprieve,”
While she, with every touch, let truth be torn.
She fed him fruits that burst with phantom warmth,
Their juice the hue of bruises left by years,
And sang him ballads of forgotten ships
Whose crews now slept, unmarked by stone or tears.

Yet in the labyrinth of moon-kissed leaves,
He glimpsed the garden’s heart—a blighted core:
A tree, its branches skeletal and bowed,
Spawned from the bones of those who’d come before.
Their names, like scars, were carved into its bark,
Sailors and saints ensnared by honeyed lies,
Their whispers woven through the rotten soil,
A chorus drowned beneath her lullabies.

“Who are they?” he begged, his voice a shard
Of broken glass. She stroked his fevered brow,
“Lovers who swore to stay, yet dared to leave.
The garden claims what time cannot allow.”
Her kiss, then—cold as coins on dead men’s eyes—
Sealed his fate within her thorny keep,
While high above, the stars, indifferent, burned,
Their light too late to wake him from the deep.

One night, as rot began to claim his breath,
He clawed at earth, a beast in futile thrall,
And found beneath the roses’ blushing veil
The locket of a boy lost to the squall—
His own. A relic from a life erased,
Now tarnished by the garden’s hungry spite.
“You knew,” he gasped. “You knew I’d wander here,
And lured me not to solace, but to night.”

She smiled, her form unspun to wind and smoke,
“All gardens thrive on what they must deceive.
You sought an end to loneliness, poor fool—
But loneliness is all that I can grieve.”
The vines constricted, verdant executioners,
As petals fell like tears he could not shed.
The tree absorbed his final, choking breath,
And in its boughs, one more name bled.

Now sailors whisper of a shore accursed,
Where blooms outlive the hands that dare to tend,
And in the hush of midnight’s balm, you’ll hear
A man’s last cry, and roses that pretend
To mourn. But truth, like roots, digs deep and hides:
The garden lives on love turned into loss,
Its beauty but a requiem composed
Of all the hearts betrayed to feed the moss.

The mariner’s bones, now cradled by the mold,
Echo the price of trusting sunless skies.
And she, the warden of that loveless grove,
Still waits—for gardens starve without their lies.