The Mirage of Unkissed Dawns

The winds, like ghosts, recount her nameless tale—
A heart once swelled with melodies now stilled,
A face that moonlit rivers would bewail,
Now gaunt, by grief’s unyielding chisel skilled.
Yet in her breast, a flicker dares persist,
A phantom flame the desert could not strip,
For souls, though starved, by longing may exist,
When fed on dreams that part not from the lip.

Three suns had drowned in pools of molten brass
Since last she glimpsed a shape that breathed or stirred,
When lo! A tremor in the heat’s morass—
A silhouette where no life rode the herd.
It seemed the desert birthed its counterpart:
A wanderer whose brow, though dust-defiled,
Still bore the grace of some celestial art,
His eyes twin pools wherein soft stars beguiled.

“What phantom art thou,” quoth the broken maid,
“That dares to walk where even vultures tire?
Thy flesh seems spun from light and shade betrayed,
Thy voice—does it but stoke deception’s fire?”
The stranger bowed, his smile tinged with rue,
“No spectre I, but prisoner of this plain,
Who seeks what once he lost, and seeks anew,
Though sand and time conspire to rend the chain.”

‘Twas thus two solitudes, by chance aligned,
Began their march through wastes that stretched like years,
He, pouring forth the wisdom of his mind,
She, thawing frosts accumulated through tears.
He spoke of gardens caged in memory’s keep,
Of laughter drowned beneath some foreign wave,
While she, with trembling lip, began to weep
O’er vows exchanged beside a lover’s grave.

The moon, that silver scavenger of pain,
Beheld their camp where embers kissed the cold,
And marked how close their hands dared to attain
What hearts, though yearning, feared too bold to hold.
“Why dost thou linger here,” she sighed at last,
“When eastward lies the path to life’s reprieve?”
He turned, his gaze through time and distance cast,
“My oath is to the sands—I may not leave.”

Dawn came, a blade of gold to cleave the night,
Revealing on his palm a mark obscure—
A serpent coiled around a bloom of white,
The desert’s curse, relentless and impure.
“The price,” he murmured, “of a wish unwise,
To walk immortal ‘midst these lifeless miles,
Yet now I crave what death alone supplies—
The touch of one who shares my face, my trials.”

Her soul, a-wing like larks in spring’s first throes,
Soared high, then dashed ‘gainst pity’s jagged shore,
For love, which in the harshest soil still grows,
Had bloomed where none had blossomed heretofore.
They dreamed of palms that leaned to shield their rest,
Of streams that sang through valleys lush and fair,
Illusions spun from need’s unspoken quest,
While real sands sifted through their clutching air.

But ah! The desert, ever-jealous lord,
Woke tempests in its breast to sunder ties
That bound two souls its solitude had scored,
And sent its fury darkening the skies.
The simoom howled, a dervish wild and grim,
Its breath a furnace, scorching all to naught,
She reached—her fingers closed on vapors dim,
He faded as mist shred by winds long fought.

When calm resumed its bleak dominion here,
One figure stood amidst the dunes’ stark waves,
Her arms embraced but phantoms of her dear,
Her cry the dirge that every echo craves:
“Take not the shadow I so lately won!
Or if thou must, let sand my form entomb!”
The waste replied with silence, spared of sun,
A tomb sans marker, vista sans perfume.

Now travellers (if such dare tread this zone)
Report a shape that roams the lifeless miles,
Her voice entwined with winds that ceaseless moan,
Her hands still tracing lost, remembered smiles.
They say the dunes at times assume his face,
That stars descend to dance about her hair,
But these are tales born of the desert’s grace—
Lies spun to sweeten truth’s unkindly air.

Thus stands the moral writ in dust and fire:
The heart that dares to love what time destroys
Shall walk alone through vasts of bleak desire,
Its solace—mirage-borne, ephemeral joys.
Yet who would choose the safe, unrisked defeat,
When doomed magnificence may briefly blaze?
Better the searing kiss, though incomplete,
Than never scorched by love’s forbidden rays.