The Ballad of Sands and Silent Strings

Through amber waves that shift like spectral seas,
He spies a spire where no spire should be—
A phantom town, its towers veiled in gold,
A mirage born from heat and thirst untold.
Yet as he nears, the vision does not fade;
Stone walls arise from dust, in splendor laid,
And there, beneath an arch of jasmine bloom,
A lady stands, enrobed in twilight’s gloom.

Her eyes, twin pools where sorrow’s secrets sleep,
Hold worlds more vast than wastes where jackals creep.
“What ghost,” she asks, “dares walk my sundered hall?
What mortal flesh defies the sand’s harsh thrall?”
He bows, his voice a rasp of broken chords:
“No ghost, my lady, but a man of words
Whose song once charmed the stars from velvet night,
Now damned to roam where melody takes flight.”

She smiles—a crescent moon in storm-tossed skies—
And bids him enter where her heart yet lies.
Through corridors where frescoes weep their hues,
They speak of art, of beauty’s brief reviews.
Her fingers trace his lute’s warped, splintered spine:
“This instrument has known a love divine.
Why let its voice now choke on bitter air?
Revive its tongue; let grief become your prayer.”

He plays. The notes, like liquid silver spun,
Unspool the ache of years beneath the sun.
The walls breathe deep; lost gardens bloom in sound,
And for one breathless hour, life is crowned.
But as the final chord dissolves to dust,
Her laughter fades to ash, her form to rust.
The palace crumbles like a dream undone—
He stands alone, embraced by sand and sun.

Yet nightly now, when stars don mourning veils,
She comes to him where desolation wails.
Her touch, a breeze that cools his blistered hands,
Her voice, the rain denied by thirsty lands.
“How is it,” asks the minstrel, gaunt and lean,
“That you exist where no green thing grows green?
What cruel enchantment binds your fleeting frame?”
She answers soft: “I am this desert’s shame.”

For she was heir to realms now blown to sand,
Betrothed to death by her own father’s hand.
When plague-black winds devoured field and flock,
They sealed her living in a sun-struck rock,
A sacrifice to gods long turned to stone,
That crops might rise where none had ever grown.
But sand drank deep her tears, her final cry,
And spat her back—not dead, yet bound to die.

Their stolen hours bloom like poisoned wine,
Each meeting brief, each parting a new spine
Thrust deep beneath the ribs of hope’s frail cage.
He crafts her ballads; she, with words sage,
Reveals the desert’s ancient, whispered lore—
How dunes conspire, how scorpions keep score.
But love, unspoken, hangs between their speech,
A fruit forbidden, rotting just past reach.

One eve, as vultures etch their grim ballet,
She brings a vial gleaned from dying day:
“This draught, distilled from midnight’s rarest dew,
Could make me mortal, if consumed by two.
Yet know this well—its curse outweighs its grace:
Who drinks shall walk the earth without a trace,
A wraith forgot by time’s relentless stream.
Choose wisely, minstrel; this is no base dream.”

He hesitates—not for the curse he’d bear,
But fear his art might fade to hollow air.
“What good,” he mourns, “a life that leaves no mark?
A song unsung? A lute sans flame or spark?”
Her face, a mask of patience long endured,
Grows cold as dunes by winter’s breath obscured:
“Then keep your fame, let dust your name enshrine.
My prison’s bars were forged by fears like thine.”

She fades. The vial shatters on the stones,
Its nectar swallowed by the desert’s bones.
He claws the air where her last shadow clung,
His anguished roar the only dirge unsung.
Days melt to weeks, he searches every dune,
But she, like water, slips beneath the moon.
His lute grows mute, its strings cut one by one,
Until the night his pilgrimage is done.

Beneath the claw of some forgotten spire,
He finds her scarf, half-buried, torn by fire.
The fabric hums with memories of her breath—
He wraps it tight and marches toward his death.
The sandstorm comes, a lion starved for meat,
Its jaws agape to swallow his defeat.
He smiles, arms spread, and whispers to the gale:
“Let our last duet be my dying wail.”

The winds obey. They lift his broken form,
Weave flesh with sand, remake him as the storm.
Now when the desert howls its mournful tune,
Two voices rise—hers silver, his a rune.
And travelers who brave the wastes at night
Report strange music, phantom lovers’ plight.
But none dare seek the source, so pure the pain—
Some hearts, once shattered, never beat again.