The Withering of Elowen’s Rose
Beneath the sepulchral boughs of Yewold Wood,
Where shadows knit their tapestries of grief,
A woman treads with footsteps understood
By none but ghosts and withered, wind-tossed leaf.
Her name, once sung by brooks in spring’s soft tongue,
Now hangs a muted bell in twilight’s shroud—
Elowen, she whose heart, too soon unstrung,
Bears autumn’s frost where love had laughed aloud.
The forest breathes in whispers: tales of old,
Of roots that drink the tears of wayward souls,
Of bargains struck in currencies untold
To mend what time’s cold scalpel never wholes.
Her palms, like maps of all she’s yearned to keep,
Clasp twinned petals—crimson, fading, frail—
A rose plucked from a grave where two hearts sleep,
Its thorns still sharp with vows no fate could quail.
*“Return him,”* pleads her voice, a fractured chime,
To lichen-crowned stones and the hollow air.
*“Unspool the years that stole him mid his prime—
Let death’s ledger confess my name, not his, there.”*
The trees exhale a dirge; the mist conspires
To paint his face in droplets on her cheek:
A man whose laugh could coax dormant fires,
Now sealed where earth and silence solely speak.
A shape emerges—neither flesh nor wraith—
A coalescence of the wood’s lament,
Its eyes twin pools where mortal hopes meet faith,
Its voice the creak of oaks by centuries bent.
*“Child of dust, you seek to chain the stream,
To graft your sorrow onto boughs divine.
But roots that feed on sacrifice may gleam…
Will you become the sap, if he be mine?”*
She kneels, the rose now trembling in her grip,
Its scent a phantom of their last embrace.
*“Take every season from my mortal script,
Unmake my dawns, if dawns for him find place.”*
The specter bows, its breath a rasp of thorn,
And weaves from moonlight threads of ancient law—
A vial of dusk, where all lost loves are born,
Pressed to her lips with talons none can draw.
Her veins ignite with twilight’s mercury,
Her skin transluces to a petaled sheen,
As roots ascend to claim their living tree
And bind her form where no dawn intervenes.
The glade bears witness: buds burst black and strange,
Their nectar thick with memories repurposed,
While deep in Yewold’s core, a vital exchange—
A heartbeat stirs where soil and star conversed.
He wakes—her William—beneath a foreign sun,
His lungs infused with jasmine, not decay.
No tombstone bears the name of what’s undone,
No dirge dirges where his feet now stray.
But in his chest, a thorned vine softly grows,
Each bloom a whisper of her forfeit breath,
And when he plucks one, through the garden goes
A cry the wind translates as *“Love is death.”*
Elowen’s voice now dwells in rainfall’s sigh,
Her face the pallor on the moon’s cracked sphere,
Her hair the rustle as the dead leaves fly
To etch their epitaphs on another year.
The rose? It thrives, immortal and austere,
Fed by the sap of what she dared to sire—
A testament to how the world holds dear
The hearts that burn themselves to feed love’s pyre.
Yet wander near that grove when midnight bleeds,
And you may glimpse her, rooted, yet unbound—
A woman made of seasons, sowing seeds
Of shadow where her hands caress the ground.
The William-trees bloom wild, their fragrance wrought
From every kiss she traded for his breath,
While time, that thief, strolls through the maze of thought
And smiles, for even grief outlives its death.
Where shadows knit their tapestries of grief,
A woman treads with footsteps understood
By none but ghosts and withered, wind-tossed leaf.
Her name, once sung by brooks in spring’s soft tongue,
Now hangs a muted bell in twilight’s shroud—
Elowen, she whose heart, too soon unstrung,
Bears autumn’s frost where love had laughed aloud.
The forest breathes in whispers: tales of old,
Of roots that drink the tears of wayward souls,
Of bargains struck in currencies untold
To mend what time’s cold scalpel never wholes.
Her palms, like maps of all she’s yearned to keep,
Clasp twinned petals—crimson, fading, frail—
A rose plucked from a grave where two hearts sleep,
Its thorns still sharp with vows no fate could quail.
*“Return him,”* pleads her voice, a fractured chime,
To lichen-crowned stones and the hollow air.
*“Unspool the years that stole him mid his prime—
Let death’s ledger confess my name, not his, there.”*
The trees exhale a dirge; the mist conspires
To paint his face in droplets on her cheek:
A man whose laugh could coax dormant fires,
Now sealed where earth and silence solely speak.
A shape emerges—neither flesh nor wraith—
A coalescence of the wood’s lament,
Its eyes twin pools where mortal hopes meet faith,
Its voice the creak of oaks by centuries bent.
*“Child of dust, you seek to chain the stream,
To graft your sorrow onto boughs divine.
But roots that feed on sacrifice may gleam…
Will you become the sap, if he be mine?”*
She kneels, the rose now trembling in her grip,
Its scent a phantom of their last embrace.
*“Take every season from my mortal script,
Unmake my dawns, if dawns for him find place.”*
The specter bows, its breath a rasp of thorn,
And weaves from moonlight threads of ancient law—
A vial of dusk, where all lost loves are born,
Pressed to her lips with talons none can draw.
Her veins ignite with twilight’s mercury,
Her skin transluces to a petaled sheen,
As roots ascend to claim their living tree
And bind her form where no dawn intervenes.
The glade bears witness: buds burst black and strange,
Their nectar thick with memories repurposed,
While deep in Yewold’s core, a vital exchange—
A heartbeat stirs where soil and star conversed.
He wakes—her William—beneath a foreign sun,
His lungs infused with jasmine, not decay.
No tombstone bears the name of what’s undone,
No dirge dirges where his feet now stray.
But in his chest, a thorned vine softly grows,
Each bloom a whisper of her forfeit breath,
And when he plucks one, through the garden goes
A cry the wind translates as *“Love is death.”*
Elowen’s voice now dwells in rainfall’s sigh,
Her face the pallor on the moon’s cracked sphere,
Her hair the rustle as the dead leaves fly
To etch their epitaphs on another year.
The rose? It thrives, immortal and austere,
Fed by the sap of what she dared to sire—
A testament to how the world holds dear
The hearts that burn themselves to feed love’s pyre.
Yet wander near that grove when midnight bleeds,
And you may glimpse her, rooted, yet unbound—
A woman made of seasons, sowing seeds
Of shadow where her hands caress the ground.
The William-trees bloom wild, their fragrance wrought
From every kiss she traded for his breath,
While time, that thief, strolls through the maze of thought
And smiles, for even grief outlives its death.
