The Starveling’s Farewell
Beneath the vault of twilight’s ashen, brooding shroud,
Where ancient oaks in gnarled lamentation bowed,
A woman trod with steps like whispers lost to time,
Her heart a parchment scrawled with sorrow’s bitter rhyme.
The forest, cloaked in veils of moss and mem’ry’s stain,
Breathed secrets through the boughs, a mournful, hushed refrain.
No moon dared pierce the gloom where shadows writhed and clung,
Save one faint star, whose silver tear the darkness stung.
Her name, once sung by springs now choked with ivy’s grasp,
Had faded as the dew that dawn’s cold fingers clasp.
Yet in her eyes, the ghost of hopes long turned to dust
Still flickered, weak and wan, as lamps in tombs of rust.
“O hollow grove,” she cried, “whose roots drink deep my pain,
Why bind me to this path where light and life are slain?
What specter waits to claim the remnants of my breath,
And weave my final thread upon the loom of death?”
The trees, like judges robed in lichen’s fraying green,
Stood mute, though winds awoke a murmur serpentine.
A voice, not hers, nor yet the tempest’s wild decree,
Uncoiled from depths where stone and sorrow cease to be:
“Thou art the echo of the rift ‘twixt star and clay,
The breath that frosts the glass where Time’s portraits decay.
Walk deeper, walk ‘til thorns have stripped thy soul to bone,
And know the price of truths no mortal hand may own.”
She trembled, yet her feet, by fate’s cold compass led,
Pressed onward through the bracken’s clawing, thorny bed.
Each step a dirge, each breath a plea to unnamed powers,
While round her danced the phantoms of devoured hours—
A child’s laugh ensnared in cobweb tracery,
A lover’s vow drowned in the swamp’s lethargy,
The glint of blades that parted bonds no art could mend,
All wove their pallid light into the wood’s vast end.
At last, a clearing where the star’s lone sentinel
Cast down its argent lance, a bridge from earth to hell.
There knelt she, palms upturned as if to catch the sky,
Her voice a fraying thread, her question borne on high:
“If thou art Mercy’s eye, or but a trick of frost,
Declare what justice binds the broken to their cost!
Why must the wound outlive the hand that dealt the blow,
And mem’ry’s curse outpace the blood’s forgotten flow?”
The star blazed not, but dimmed—a sigh through space congealed—
And from its light there stepped a figure long concealed.
Not angel, fiend, nor shade, but something wrought between,
His face a mirror of her own, yet unseen—
A youth with eyes like hers, but where her gaze was rime,
His held the fire that gutters at the edge of time.
“Dear sister of the labyrinth,” he softly spake,
“Thy grief is but the key to gates thou must forsake.
“For I am he who walked before thee, bound and blind,
The self thou buriedst to leave thy past behind.
This wood is but thy soul’s own shadow, stretched and vast,
Each thorn the barbed regret that festers from the past.
The star thou plead’st with is the spark none may retain—
The love that, once extinguished, cannot wake again.
To linger here is but to feed the endless ache;
The farewell thou dost fear is dawn’s first breath, awake.”
She reached to touch his cheek—her fingers met with air,
Yet in that void, a warmth no mortal flesh could bear.
“Then let the thorns take all,” she wept, “and rend the veil!
If truth demands my heart as tribute, let it fail.
But tell me, phantom brother, ere thy light depart—
Was all my love but ash ere it could reach thy heart?”
He smiled—a dawn that breaks too late for frozen lands—
And pressed a ghostly kiss to her imploring hands.
“No love is lost that ever true and boundless shone;
The fault was mine, who chose the dark to walk alone.
But see, the hour comes when both must meet the test—
Thy final step shall sever chains or slay the rest.”
The star now pulsed, a beacon through the rising mist,
As shadows coiled like serpents where the tree trunks kissed.
She rose, her form as frail as parchment in a flame,
Yet straight she stood, and claimed the voice she could not name:
“If this be absolution’s price, I’ll pay the toll—
But let one truth be carved where once I bore a soul.
Though flesh may fade, and years reduce my song to rust,
I loved thee beyond death—in that, I keep my trust.”
The glade erupted in a maelstrom of decay—
The oaks dissolved to smoke, the star sucked out its day.
Her brother’s shape, unknit by winds that howled and soared,
Became a thousand leaves on night’s black river poured.
Alone, she faced the void where all her ghosts had fled,
And whispered to the dark, “I’m ready,” as the thread
Snapped clean. No tomb, no pyre marked where last she stood,
Just stillness, and the scent of rain on ancient wood.
But sometimes, when the star pierces the cloud’s tight seal,
A sigh is heard—not sad, nor sweet—but fierce and real.
The forest, dreaming, stirs, and in its roots there runs
A sound like two names merged where once were burdened ones.
Thus ends the tale, but not the ache that birthed its rhyme—
For who can split the star from those it claims in time?
Where ancient oaks in gnarled lamentation bowed,
A woman trod with steps like whispers lost to time,
Her heart a parchment scrawled with sorrow’s bitter rhyme.
The forest, cloaked in veils of moss and mem’ry’s stain,
Breathed secrets through the boughs, a mournful, hushed refrain.
No moon dared pierce the gloom where shadows writhed and clung,
Save one faint star, whose silver tear the darkness stung.
Her name, once sung by springs now choked with ivy’s grasp,
Had faded as the dew that dawn’s cold fingers clasp.
Yet in her eyes, the ghost of hopes long turned to dust
Still flickered, weak and wan, as lamps in tombs of rust.
“O hollow grove,” she cried, “whose roots drink deep my pain,
Why bind me to this path where light and life are slain?
What specter waits to claim the remnants of my breath,
And weave my final thread upon the loom of death?”
The trees, like judges robed in lichen’s fraying green,
Stood mute, though winds awoke a murmur serpentine.
A voice, not hers, nor yet the tempest’s wild decree,
Uncoiled from depths where stone and sorrow cease to be:
“Thou art the echo of the rift ‘twixt star and clay,
The breath that frosts the glass where Time’s portraits decay.
Walk deeper, walk ‘til thorns have stripped thy soul to bone,
And know the price of truths no mortal hand may own.”
She trembled, yet her feet, by fate’s cold compass led,
Pressed onward through the bracken’s clawing, thorny bed.
Each step a dirge, each breath a plea to unnamed powers,
While round her danced the phantoms of devoured hours—
A child’s laugh ensnared in cobweb tracery,
A lover’s vow drowned in the swamp’s lethargy,
The glint of blades that parted bonds no art could mend,
All wove their pallid light into the wood’s vast end.
At last, a clearing where the star’s lone sentinel
Cast down its argent lance, a bridge from earth to hell.
There knelt she, palms upturned as if to catch the sky,
Her voice a fraying thread, her question borne on high:
“If thou art Mercy’s eye, or but a trick of frost,
Declare what justice binds the broken to their cost!
Why must the wound outlive the hand that dealt the blow,
And mem’ry’s curse outpace the blood’s forgotten flow?”
The star blazed not, but dimmed—a sigh through space congealed—
And from its light there stepped a figure long concealed.
Not angel, fiend, nor shade, but something wrought between,
His face a mirror of her own, yet unseen—
A youth with eyes like hers, but where her gaze was rime,
His held the fire that gutters at the edge of time.
“Dear sister of the labyrinth,” he softly spake,
“Thy grief is but the key to gates thou must forsake.
“For I am he who walked before thee, bound and blind,
The self thou buriedst to leave thy past behind.
This wood is but thy soul’s own shadow, stretched and vast,
Each thorn the barbed regret that festers from the past.
The star thou plead’st with is the spark none may retain—
The love that, once extinguished, cannot wake again.
To linger here is but to feed the endless ache;
The farewell thou dost fear is dawn’s first breath, awake.”
She reached to touch his cheek—her fingers met with air,
Yet in that void, a warmth no mortal flesh could bear.
“Then let the thorns take all,” she wept, “and rend the veil!
If truth demands my heart as tribute, let it fail.
But tell me, phantom brother, ere thy light depart—
Was all my love but ash ere it could reach thy heart?”
He smiled—a dawn that breaks too late for frozen lands—
And pressed a ghostly kiss to her imploring hands.
“No love is lost that ever true and boundless shone;
The fault was mine, who chose the dark to walk alone.
But see, the hour comes when both must meet the test—
Thy final step shall sever chains or slay the rest.”
The star now pulsed, a beacon through the rising mist,
As shadows coiled like serpents where the tree trunks kissed.
She rose, her form as frail as parchment in a flame,
Yet straight she stood, and claimed the voice she could not name:
“If this be absolution’s price, I’ll pay the toll—
But let one truth be carved where once I bore a soul.
Though flesh may fade, and years reduce my song to rust,
I loved thee beyond death—in that, I keep my trust.”
The glade erupted in a maelstrom of decay—
The oaks dissolved to smoke, the star sucked out its day.
Her brother’s shape, unknit by winds that howled and soared,
Became a thousand leaves on night’s black river poured.
Alone, she faced the void where all her ghosts had fled,
And whispered to the dark, “I’m ready,” as the thread
Snapped clean. No tomb, no pyre marked where last she stood,
Just stillness, and the scent of rain on ancient wood.
But sometimes, when the star pierces the cloud’s tight seal,
A sigh is heard—not sad, nor sweet—but fierce and real.
The forest, dreaming, stirs, and in its roots there runs
A sound like two names merged where once were burdened ones.
Thus ends the tale, but not the ache that birthed its rhyme—
For who can split the star from those it claims in time?
“`
