The Soliloquy of Sands
A silhouette etches its fragile path—
A traveler, nameless as the winds that moan,
Through dunes that rise like tombs of bleached bone.
His shadow, gaunt and trembling, crawls
Where no root clings, no whispered water calls,
Only the scorpion’s hymn, the vulture’s arc,
And Time’s own breath, parched and stark.
Three moons have bled since last he saw
The jasmine spires of Astraphar,
Where she, with eyes of twilight’s last caress,
Bound his soul in silent tenderness.
Now sands devour each footfall’s trace,
Erasing maps, devouring grace,
Yet in his breast, a locket’s weight—
A curl of hair, a whispered fate.
*“Return,”* she murmured, *“ere the cranes take flight,*
*Or I shall fade like frost before the light.”*
Her cough, a dagger through chrysanthemum air,
Had birthed this pilgrimage of despair.
The alchemists’ lies, the sages’ lore—
All spoke of springs where Death’s footfalls ignore
The mortal veil. Thus, armed with myth,
He’d kissed her brow, her quivering breath.
Now delirium drapes its fevered gauze:
Her voice hums in the simoom’s jaws,
Her laughter spins in mirage lakes,
Her fingers brush the copper snakes
That coil ‘round his canteen, drained
To one last mouthful, sour and stained.
The stars, once guides, now leer and twist—
A mockery of the vow he kissed.
At dusk, when dunes don violet shrouds,
He stumbles into a circle of stones, bowed
Like ancient sentinels whose tongues were torn
To keep the desert’s secret unborn.
There, carved in tongues no pilgrim reads,
A prophecy: *“Who slakes the dust’s greed
With life’s own vintage, freely poured,
Shall wake the well where love’s restored.”*
The canteen trembles in his grip.
Her face blooms vivid—palest lips
Parting in delirium’s cruel ballet,
Silk sheets stained with sunset’s decay.
*“Enough,”* the stones seem to hiss,
*“Choose: the well’s bloom or her abyss.”*
He smashes clay against the script.
The last drops kiss the sand, eclipse—
A groan beneath his feet. The earth
Unfists a spring, a silver rebirth
Gushing where the sacrifice descended.
He laughs, arms wide, as madness mended
Crumbles. No cup to catch the cure,
No pouch to bear what cannot endure.
Kneeling, he drinks till veins sing hymns,
Then fills the locket’s hollow to the brim.
*“Swift, love, swift,”* the northwind pleads,
As he charts his course by dying weeds
That burst where waters briefly flirted.
Two suns. Three. The locket’s weight
Burns colder than the moon’s debate.
On the fifth dawn, Astraphar’s spires
Pierce the haze—a city of pyres
Draped in black. No cranes ascend.
Her gates exhale a mourner’s drone.
Through streets where paper lanterns moan,
He crawls, the locket clenched in rot,
To find her window sealed. A knot
Of strangers stare: *“She left no note
But this—”* A scroll, unbound, floats
Into his palm. Her scent, her hand—
*“Forgive me. I could not withstand…”*
The locket cracks against the tiles.
A curl dissolves to golden miles.
Some say a shadow walks the dunes,
Mouthing vows to crescent moons,
While deep beneath the thirsty plain,
A spring still weeps his unanswered name.
But in the town where cranes return,
Two ghosts drink from the same urn.
