The Painter’s Silent Bloom

Julian, they named him—a man of hues,
Whose brush wept gold, whose heart bore bruise.
The world, a chorus of scornful eyes,
Deemed his visions but fractured skies.

Yet deep within that cloistered grove,
Where ivy clasped the stones above,
He nursed a dream no tongue could tell:
A portrait forged in heaven’s well.

There, ’neath the arbors’ emerald breath,
He met the specter love bequeaths—
A face that dawned from canvas deep,
A voice no waking soul could keep.

*“What name,”* he asked, *“does shadow take?
What realm claims thee, yet bids thee wake?”*
Her lips, a ripple ’cross stilled wine,
*“I am the hour no clock can chime.”*

Aurelia—ghost of pigment’s trance,
Born where moon and mortal dance.
Her eyes held tides that drowned his reason,
Her touch, the thaw of frosted season.

By day, he shaped her silvered guise,
By night, she stepped from framed lies,
To walk the paths where jasmines weep,
And secrets even stars dare keep.

*“Paint me not in vermilion’s blaze,”*
She’d whisper through the laurel maze,
*“Nor crown me with the lily’s pall—
For love that lives must first recall

The weight of hours that chain the breast,
The grace of things by death possessed.”*
He mixed his tears with crushed azure,
And gave her form no law could cure.

The garden watched, its boughs bent low,
As man and marvel wrought their woe.
The lilacs turned their heads away,
Foreseeing dawn’s unkindly fray.

One eve, as dusk undid its braid,
She spoke the words fate long delayed:
*“Your hand, which kindles life from naught,
Has bound me here in threads of thought.

Yet what is spun by art’s deceit
Must crumble where two worlds meet.
I am the sigh that gaps the veil—
To love me is to court the gale.”*

He clasped her wrist of powdered light,
*“If thou art dream, then I am night.
Let storms devour the treach’rous shore,
So we may be what gods ignore.”*

But as he reached to seal his vow,
Her edges blurred, her brow to snow.
The air grew thick with unborn screams,
The garden choked on silvered dreams.

She faded as all phantoms must,
Leaving naught but scent and dust.
His fingers gripped the hollow air,
His cry rent twilight’s muted stare.

Then came the plague of waking years—
The canvas mocked with phantom tears.
Each petal drooped, each leaf let fall
To shroud the ruin of it all.

He sought her in the stroke of dawn,
In every shadow, every thorn.
The well where nightingales once drank
Now echoed with a banked heart’s clank.

At last, when winter stripped the glade,
He laid him where first light decayed.
The frost, in pity, kissed his cheek,
The earth, in grief, refused to speak.

And somewhere in that garden’s core,
Where none dare tread forevermore,
A single brushstroke lingers, bright—
A star against eternal night.

There, lovers say, when hope seems spent,
Two shadows through the dusk are sent:
One, a man with colors dimmed,
One, a voice that never hymned.

They drift where no rose dares unfold,
Bound by a tale no tongue has told,
Proof that some loves, by heaven’s scheme,
Burn brightest where they cannot gleam.