The Ballad of Hollowed Veins
A Dirge in the Dusk-Touched Thickets
Beneath the ash-gray canopy of ancient, knotted boughs,
Where shadows hummed a dirge no mortal tongue could name,
He walked—the boy with ink-stained palms and wilted brows,
A poet cursed to bear the weight of syllables aflame.
The forest breathed in whispers, serpentine and cold,
Its roots like twisted harp-strings thrumming underground,
Each step he took, the earth exhaled a secret told
In tongues of moss and marrow, in gasps of frost-bound sound.
He came to trade his heartbeat for a ghost of light,
To barter breath and bone-dust where the old gods tread,
For deep within the thicket, veiled in endless night,
She lay—his pale Eurydice, her pulse a dwindling thread.
***
Recall the days when her laughter wove the dawn’s first gold,
When her voice could gentle tempests in his storm-wracked skull,
But now her cheeks out-paled the lilies, stark and cold,
Her veins mapped constellations where the plague’s chill swirled.
“The woods,” she’d gasped, her fingers frail as spider’s lace,
“Hold cures in thorns and curses… or so the legends weep.
But promise me—if darkness wins this breathless race—
You’ll burn my name to embers, let no shadowed memory keep.”
Yet here he strayed, where twilight bled to starless black,
Defying her last wish to seek the forbidden cure,
His pockets lined with sonnets, his soul a hollowed sack,
Each verse a thorn he’d rip from flesh to make her death obscure.
***
The trees grew teeth. The air congealed to liquid dread.
A chorus of dead saplings clawed up through the loam,
Their branches knitting crypt-roots ‘round his feet like lead,
As the forest hissed its verdict: “You shall walk alone.”
But lo! A glimmer flickered—a wraith in jade and gray—
A woman? Or a mirage spun from fever’s veil?
Her hair a cascade of ivy, her eyes the moon’s decay,
She sang without a mouth, her voice a shard of hail:
“Three trials, poet, for the draught that mends torn fate:
First, sever from your throat the words you love the most.
Next, drink the sap of sorrow from the heartwood’s grate.
Last, offer up the memory of her voice—a ghost.”
He knelt, the dagger of his quill pressed to his neck,
And carved out “*love*,” “*forever*,” “*her*”—wet rubies in the dirt.
The trees drank deep his ballads, left his lexicon a wreck,
While the specter watched, her silence a grinning hurt.
***
The second trial: a chalice filled with blackened dew,
The sap of some primordial oak, its anguish raw and stark.
He drank—a thousand mourners’ wails dissolved into his sinew,
Aging him decades in the span of one gasped arc.
His hands, once quick as sonnets, shook like guttered flame,
His eyes grew caverns where the boyish light had played,
Yet still he clutched the phantom’s vial, whispered her name,
And dragged his ruin onward through the ever-darkening glade.
***
The final price: “Surrender how she called the spring,
The timbre of her whisper when she bid the world goodnight.
Forget the lilt that made your fractured soul take wing—
Or keep it, and let her perish in the owl’s bone-white light.”
Oh, what is breath without her cadence to give it tune?
What use a poet’s heart if stripped of her refrain?
Yet as he wept, the vial glowed—a cruel, mocking boon—
And he severed his soul’s anchor to unmake her pain.
***
At dawn’s first bruise, he stumbled to her sickbed side,
The potion swirling murky in its crystal shard,
Pressed it to her lips (now blue as twilight’s tide),
And watched her breathe, revived—while something in him hardened.
She woke, her eyes twin mirrors of the life he’d sold,
But as she smiled, the forest’s laughter shook the room—
For in her gaze now lurked the void he’d bargained to the cold,
Her memories of him erased, her love entombed.
***
He fled to where the pines stood sentinel in gloom,
The curse’s truth a viper coiling in his chest:
That those who steal from death must leave a double doom—
One life restored, another hollowed of its best.
The poet’s quill snapped, mute, in his ashen grip,
His voice a rasp of wind through tombs of long-dead leaves,
While she, now wed to spring, let joyous laughter slip,
Unknowing of the specter left to grieve.
***
Beneath the ash-gray canopy, where shadows chant his name,
A figure kneels, each day, to trace her footprints fled,
His hands still ink-stained, though no verse dares proclaim
The cost of loving deeper than the allowed thread.
And when the crows convene at dusk to sing their tales,
They speak of wilted roses in a sunless grove,
Of blood-ink spilled for nothing, of a voice now pale as veils,
And how the greatest tragedies are forged by those who love.
A Dirge in the Dusk-Touched Thickets
Beneath the ash-gray canopy of ancient, knotted boughs,
Where shadows hummed a dirge no mortal tongue could name,
He walked—the boy with ink-stained palms and wilted brows,
A poet cursed to bear the weight of syllables aflame.
The forest breathed in whispers, serpentine and cold,
Its roots like twisted harp-strings thrumming underground,
Each step he took, the earth exhaled a secret told
In tongues of moss and marrow, in gasps of frost-bound sound.
He came to trade his heartbeat for a ghost of light,
To barter breath and bone-dust where the old gods tread,
For deep within the thicket, veiled in endless night,
She lay—his pale Eurydice, her pulse a dwindling thread.
***
Recall the days when her laughter wove the dawn’s first gold,
When her voice could gentle tempests in his storm-wracked skull,
But now her cheeks out-paled the lilies, stark and cold,
Her veins mapped constellations where the plague’s chill swirled.
“The woods,” she’d gasped, her fingers frail as spider’s lace,
“Hold cures in thorns and curses… or so the legends weep.
But promise me—if darkness wins this breathless race—
You’ll burn my name to embers, let no shadowed memory keep.”
Yet here he strayed, where twilight bled to starless black,
Defying her last wish to seek the forbidden cure,
His pockets lined with sonnets, his soul a hollowed sack,
Each verse a thorn he’d rip from flesh to make her death obscure.
***
The trees grew teeth. The air congealed to liquid dread.
A chorus of dead saplings clawed up through the loam,
Their branches knitting crypt-roots ‘round his feet like lead,
As the forest hissed its verdict: “You shall walk alone.”
But lo! A glimmer flickered—a wraith in jade and gray—
A woman? Or a mirage spun from fever’s veil?
Her hair a cascade of ivy, her eyes the moon’s decay,
She sang without a mouth, her voice a shard of hail:
“Three trials, poet, for the draught that mends torn fate:
First, sever from your throat the words you love the most.
Next, drink the sap of sorrow from the heartwood’s grate.
Last, offer up the memory of her voice—a ghost.”
He knelt, the dagger of his quill pressed to his neck,
And carved out “*love*,” “*forever*,” “*her*”—wet rubies in the dirt.
The trees drank deep his ballads, left his lexicon a wreck,
While the specter watched, her silence a grinning hurt.
***
The second trial: a chalice filled with blackened dew,
The sap of some primordial oak, its anguish raw and stark.
He drank—a thousand mourners’ wails dissolved into his sinew,
Aging him decades in the span of one gasped arc.
His hands, once quick as sonnets, shook like guttered flame,
His eyes grew caverns where the boyish light had played,
Yet still he clutched the phantom’s vial, whispered her name,
And dragged his ruin onward through the ever-darkening glade.
***
The final price: “Surrender how she called the spring,
The timbre of her whisper when she bid the world goodnight.
Forget the lilt that made your fractured soul take wing—
Or keep it, and let her perish in the owl’s bone-white light.”
Oh, what is breath without her cadence to give it tune?
What use a poet’s heart if stripped of her refrain?
Yet as he wept, the vial glowed—a cruel, mocking boon—
And he severed his soul’s anchor to unmake her pain.
***
At dawn’s first bruise, he stumbled to her sickbed side,
The potion swirling murky in its crystal shard,
Pressed it to her lips (now blue as twilight’s tide),
And watched her breathe, revived—while something in him hardened.
She woke, her eyes twin mirrors of the life he’d sold,
But as she smiled, the forest’s laughter shook the room—
For in her gaze now lurked the void he’d bargained to the cold,
Her memories of him erased, her love entombed.
***
He fled to where the pines stood sentinel in gloom,
The curse’s truth a viper coiling in his chest:
That those who steal from death must leave a double doom—
One life restored, another hollowed of its best.
The poet’s quill snapped, mute, in his ashen grip,
His voice a rasp of wind through tombs of long-dead leaves,
While she, now wed to spring, let joyous laughter slip,
Unknowing of the specter left to grieve.
***
Beneath the ash-gray canopy, where shadows chant his name,
A figure kneels, each day, to trace her footprints fled,
His hands still ink-stained, though no verse dares proclaim
The cost of loving deeper than the allowed thread.
And when the crows convene at dusk to sing their tales,
They speak of wilted roses in a sunless grove,
Of blood-ink spilled for nothing, of a voice now pale as veils,
And how the greatest tragedies are forged by those who love.
Where shadows hummed a dirge no mortal tongue could name,
He walked—the boy with ink-stained palms and wilted brows,
A poet cursed to bear the weight of syllables aflame.
The forest breathed in whispers, serpentine and cold,
Its roots like twisted harp-strings thrumming underground,
Each step he took, the earth exhaled a secret told
In tongues of moss and marrow, in gasps of frost-bound sound.
He came to trade his heartbeat for a ghost of light,
To barter breath and bone-dust where the old gods tread,
For deep within the thicket, veiled in endless night,
She lay—his pale Eurydice, her pulse a dwindling thread.
***
Recall the days when her laughter wove the dawn’s first gold,
When her voice could gentle tempests in his storm-wracked skull,
But now her cheeks out-paled the lilies, stark and cold,
Her veins mapped constellations where the plague’s chill swirled.
“The woods,” she’d gasped, her fingers frail as spider’s lace,
“Hold cures in thorns and curses… or so the legends weep.
But promise me—if darkness wins this breathless race—
You’ll burn my name to embers, let no shadowed memory keep.”
Yet here he strayed, where twilight bled to starless black,
Defying her last wish to seek the forbidden cure,
His pockets lined with sonnets, his soul a hollowed sack,
Each verse a thorn he’d rip from flesh to make her death obscure.
***
The trees grew teeth. The air congealed to liquid dread.
A chorus of dead saplings clawed up through the loam,
Their branches knitting crypt-roots ‘round his feet like lead,
As the forest hissed its verdict: “You shall walk alone.”
But lo! A glimmer flickered—a wraith in jade and gray—
A woman? Or a mirage spun from fever’s veil?
Her hair a cascade of ivy, her eyes the moon’s decay,
She sang without a mouth, her voice a shard of hail:
“Three trials, poet, for the draught that mends torn fate:
First, sever from your throat the words you love the most.
Next, drink the sap of sorrow from the heartwood’s grate.
Last, offer up the memory of her voice—a ghost.”
He knelt, the dagger of his quill pressed to his neck,
And carved out “*love*,” “*forever*,” “*her*”—wet rubies in the dirt.
The trees drank deep his ballads, left his lexicon a wreck,
While the specter watched, her silence a grinning hurt.
***
The second trial: a chalice filled with blackened dew,
The sap of some primordial oak, its anguish raw and stark.
He drank—a thousand mourners’ wails dissolved into his sinew,
Aging him decades in the span of one gasped arc.
His hands, once quick as sonnets, shook like guttered flame,
His eyes grew caverns where the boyish light had played,
Yet still he clutched the phantom’s vial, whispered her name,
And dragged his ruin onward through the ever-darkening glade.
***
The final price: “Surrender how she called the spring,
The timbre of her whisper when she bid the world goodnight.
Forget the lilt that made your fractured soul take wing—
Or keep it, and let her perish in the owl’s bone-white light.”
Oh, what is breath without her cadence to give it tune?
What use a poet’s heart if stripped of her refrain?
Yet as he wept, the vial glowed—a cruel, mocking boon—
And he severed his soul’s anchor to unmake her pain.
***
At dawn’s first bruise, he stumbled to her sickbed side,
The potion swirling murky in its crystal shard,
Pressed it to her lips (now blue as twilight’s tide),
And watched her breathe, revived—while something in him hardened.
She woke, her eyes twin mirrors of the life he’d sold,
But as she smiled, the forest’s laughter shook the room—
For in her gaze now lurked the void he’d bargained to the cold,
Her memories of him erased, her love entombed.
***
He fled to where the pines stood sentinel in gloom,
The curse’s truth a viper coiling in his chest:
That those who steal from death must leave a double doom—
One life restored, another hollowed of its best.
The poet’s quill snapped, mute, in his ashen grip,
His voice a rasp of wind through tombs of long-dead leaves,
While she, now wed to spring, let joyous laughter slip,
Unknowing of the specter left to grieve.
***
Beneath the ash-gray canopy, where shadows chant his name,
A figure kneels, each day, to trace her footprints fled,
His hands still ink-stained, though no verse dares proclaim
The cost of loving deeper than the allowed thread.
And when the crows convene at dusk to sing their tales,
They speak of wilted roses in a sunless grove,
Of blood-ink spilled for nothing, of a voice now pale as veils,
And how the greatest tragedies are forged by those who love.
“`
