The Wanderer’s Eternal Twilight
A traveler trod where shadows whispered tales of death.
His boots, though worn by leagues of lonesome, winding years,
Now pressed the loam of forests steeped in silent fears.
No bird dared trill; no breeze unknotted branchèd throes—
The air, a pall, clung thick with memory of woes.
Yet still he wandered, drawn by some unseen lament,
A siren-call through boughs that mourned, decrepit, bent.
“O pilgrim,” sighed the leaves in tongues of rust and dusk,
“What quest compels thy heart to brave this hallowed musk?
Turn back, turn back—ere twilight’s final gasp is spent—
For none who tread these roots depart unscathed, unbent.”
But onward strode the man, his soul a hollowed vault,
Where echoes of lost joys had forged a somber fault.
He sought no gold, nor glory’s fleeting, gilded lie,
But respite from the gnawing void beneath his sky.
Then lo! A glimmer flickered through the charcoal pines—
A spectral maiden, wreathed in mist’s argentine lines.
Her tresses flowed like moonlight trapped in sorrow’s weave,
Her eyes, twin pools where Time had drowned all she’d believe.
“Dear wayfarer,” she wept, “what cruel stars thee guide
To tread this grove where even hope itself hath died?
I, too, once chased the dawn’s deceitful, blushing rim—
Now bound to haunt where light and life grow ever dim.”
The traveler knelt, his heart by ghostly beauty cleft,
“O phantasm fair, what curse hath left thee thus bereft?
Speak plain thy plight—perchance my hands might yet untie
The knotted threads that chain thee to this starless sky.”
A bitter laugh escaped her lips like frost’s decay,
“Thy mortal hands? They’ll but compound the debt I pay.
Three centuries past, I bartered breath and bloom
To spare my kin from plague’s all-devouring womb.
The forest’s heart, they said, held power to reverse
Death’s ledger—but its price transcends the mortal curse.
I drank the blackened sap from yonder elder tree,
And woke… a wraith, bound to this copse eternally.
My family’s bones now dust, their names by Time erased,
While I remain, love’s monument in ruin traced.”
Her voice, a silver chime through cathedral eaves,
Unlocked the traveler’s own vault of unwept griefs.
“Then let me share thy vigil,” he with passion cried,
“For in thy sorrow, I behold my own soul’s tide.
What use is life when severed from the threads that bind?
Grant me thy curse—to memories forever confined.”
The spectre trembled, leaves about her form aquake,
“Fool! Know’st thou what eternal wakefulness doth make
Of mortal minds? Each moment stretched to endless woe,
Each joy recalled but sharpens Time’s unyielding flow.”
Yet resolute he stood, the forest’s breath held still,
As night’s obsidian cloak draped vale and haunted hill.
“Then let us join our shadows,” whispered she at last,
“Thy mortal frame with ageless anguish shall be cast.”
Her fingers, cold as winter’s first ethereal kiss,
Pressed ’gainst his pulse—the world dissolved to formless mist.
Through veins there surged not blood, but liquid starlight pale,
As forest’s ancient curse commenced its slow assail.
Beneath their feet, the moss began to thrum and glow,
A labyrinth of roots emerged from depths below.
The trees leaned close, their bark split wide in grins of yew,
As earth itself reshaped to some nightmare made new.
“Behold,” she sighed, “the garden of our shared lament—
Where every petal bears the face of might’ve been spent.”
There bloomed strange flowers with petals like stained glass,
Each captured scene from lives the pair could never pass.
A cottage by a brook where children’s laughter pealed,
A hearthfire’s dance o’er aging hands now dust-concealed,
The traveler saw his own face, weathered, lone, austere,
Carving small toys for grandchildren he’d never rear.
The spectre touched a bloom where bridal veils were worn,
“These are the dreams the forest eats to feed its scorn.”
Then came the pain—not fleshly, but the soul’s raw scourge—
As centuries of loss within his being surged.
He saw her past: a girl who’d gathered autumn’s wheat,
Now trapped between the worlds that nevermore shall meet.
Her father’s voice, her mother’s touch, all stolen, gone,
While she remained, unchanging, ’neath the curse’s dawn.
“Release me!” roared the man, his mind a storm unleashed,
But roots coiled ’round his limbs, their grip by pain increased.
The maiden wept dark pearls that stained the hungry loam,
“Too late, dear heart—the forest claims another home.”
His cry became the wind through skeletal oak bones,
His tears transformed to dew on cold, unfeeling stones.
Where once stood man now loomed a twisted hawthorn tree,
Its branches clutching petals of his lost decree.
The spectre sighed, her form now dimmer than before,
“Another soul to feed the grove’s insatiable store.
Yet in his sap, perhaps some essence shall endure—
A mortal’s love, though faint, may make my burden pure.”
She pressed ghost lips to bark where face had once been wrought,
Then faded to a mist, to shadows, less than thought.
Now when the moon bleeds through the ancient, gnarled roof,
Two voices weave their ballad—proof of love’s reproof.
The wind through thorns sings of choices made in dread,
While petals dance the waltz of living and the dead.
Beware, ye who seek the forest’s false reprieve—
Its cure for mortal pain doth but the pain bereave.
