The Castle of Unspoken Echoes

Here, the hall where tapestries once breathed
sapphire and gold, now moth-eaten shrouds,
weep threads of tales he almost hears—
a laughter’s echo in the dust of clouds.
His cane taps time on the staircase’s spine,
each step a decade, each creak a year,
as he climbs toward the chamber where
a portrait’s eyes still hold him here.

*Her* face—a blur of brushstrokes and years,
yet the smile survives, that crescent wisp
which once could thaw December’s breath,
now cracks the varnish with lips unkissed.
“Miriam,” he rasps to the spider-silk air,
and the name, once nectar, now ash on his tongue,
unlocks a casket of might-have-beens
where youth’s bold heart, too timid, hung.

***
Autumn, 1823. The ballroom blazed
with crystal tears and violin sighs.
Young William, new to his uncle’s court,
saw *her* glide in—a swan through fireflies.
Her gown, the blue of midnight’s throat
before the stars dare confess their light;
her gloves, the whisper of fallen snow
that melts at the pulse of a wrist’s mute fight.

He watched her waltz with titled moths
who flocked to the flame of her father’s name,
their powdered jests like poisoned darts
aimed at the scribe’s son, his ink-stained claim.
Yet when their eyes met—brief, illicit—
across the sea of champagne and scorn,
he swore he saw a kindred prisoner
in gilded chains, though royalty-born.

***
Letters began to bloom in the castle’s gut—
parchment petals slipped between
the pages of books on astronomy,
left where she’d walk (he’d calculate the scene).
No names, no vows—just fragments signed
“A Stargazer,” “A Shore Yearning for Tide,”
metaphors their only accomplices
in the dance of words where hearts could hide.

*“Dear Unknown,”* her quill once ventured,
*“Last night I dreamt the library sighed—
each shelf a wave, each tome a shell
that held the sea’s blue, boundless cry.
What current carries you to these shores?
What constellation claims your breath?
I chart the voids between your lines…
—A Keeper of Empty Nets.”*

***
Seasons turned. The west wing’s maze
of corridors became their atlas—
a hand brushed in passing, volumes swapped,
a pressed forget-me-not in a atlas of Atlas.
Risk was their dialect; silence, their creed.
For her father’s eyes, cold as landlocked seas,
guarded the heiress’s horizon,
anchored to lineage, deaf to pleas.

Then, winter. The night the towers held
their breath beneath a diamond frost,
William dared what words had not—
a meeting no clocktower’s chime could cost.
The armory, midnight. Her breath a plume
of stolen warmth. His hands, ungloved,
reached—then froze at her whispered *“No…”*
not from her heart, but from duty’s love.

*“You’ll drown in the wake of my father’s wrath.
I’m betrothed to a shadow with a crest for a face.
Go, before the castle’s stones conspire
to etch your name in disgrace’s embrace.”*
She fled. He stood, a statue of wax
melting in the cold’s indifferent jaw,
as somewhere, a door shut like a tomb,
and the future hardened into law.

***
Spring’s return brought a carriage’s cough,
a veil, a vow, a village’s cheer.
William watched from the crow’s-nest oak,
his telescope lens fogged with a tear.
That night, he buried a cedar box
beneath the sundial’s stunted shade—
her letters, a lock of hair like spun dusk,
and a poem where truth wore hope’s charade.

***
Decades unspooled. Wars scrubbed names
from ledgers. The castle birthed weeds.
He became the archivist of absence,
tending the void where her presence recedes.
Now, in the present of peeling walls,
the old man kneels where the sundial weeps,
claws at the earth with bare, bruised hands—
digs till the rotted box creaks and keeps.

Inside: a letter sealed with a tear.
*“My Dearest William—”* (The page is flame.)
*“I lied that night. Not duty’s call,
but the physician’s verdict—death’s cold claim.
Forgive the silence. Love, unspent,
is kinder than grief’s slow, devouring tide.
When you read this, I’ll be a star’s faint sigh…
Yours, in every unwritten tide.”*

The moon withdraws. The castle stills.
An old man cradles truth’s sharp bone.
Somewhere, a nightingale’s last note
cracks the dawn—a love too late known.
He lies down where roots embrace the box,
her name the wind’s final, futile word,
as morning bleeds through shattered glass
where two shadows melt, unheard.