The Bridge of Forgotten Rain
A figure carved from sorrows none may comprehend,
Her tattered cloak, a banner of forsaken years,
Clings damp to trembling limbs the tempest would rend.
The bridge, a gothic arch o’er chasms dark and deep,
Echoes the river’s dirge where shattered dreams now sleep.
“O memory,” she cries, “thou merciless, cold thief,
Why cling to phantom joys that mock my gnawing grief?
The child who laughed in meadows gold with summer’s breath,
The hearth that pulsed with love—now ashes, dust, and death.
What chains are these that bind me to this cursed shore,
Where hope’s last ember drowns in rains that ever pour?”
No answer stirs the air save thunder’s hollow groan,
The wind, a spectral choir, laments in monotone.
Her fingers trace the railing, slick with time’s decay,
As shadows whisper tales of choices swept away.
“I sought the boundless sky,” she murmurs to the storm,
“Yet found but mazes wrought from lies and twisted form.
They promised liberty in gilded, honeyed tongues,
But forged my fetters firm where no sweet freedom runs.
The clockwork world they built—its cogs of greed and spite—
Ground slow my wings to dust, yet still I crave the light.
If truth exists beyond this veil of endless night,
Let river take my plea and bear it to the height!”
A flash! The heavens split—a momentary sign—
Reveals the churning waves that serpentine, divine.
Their foaming crests like steeds from ancient myths unbound,
Call through the screaming gale with elemental sound.
“Come, lost one,” they seem to sing in liquid rhyme,
“The sea remembers all erased by cruel time.
Beneath our silver swell, the past’s sharp edges melt;
What surface rends asunder, depth shall softly felt.
Cast off the mortal coil that weights thy broken soul,
And find in our embrace the peace that makes thee whole.”
Her eyes, twin pools reflecting storms both flesh and star,
Fix on the abyss where light and darkness war.
Three ghosts materialize—her youth’s sweet trinity:
A father’s voice, now stilled by war’s cold alchemy;
A mother’s hands, once warm with June’s maternal grace,
Now folded pale in earth’s unyielding, final embrace;
A sibling’s laughter, hushed by fever’s rapacious flame—
They beckon through the mist, yet speak no mortal name.
“Stay!” pleads the eldest shade with lips of moonbeam pale,
“Thy hourglass still holds one fragile, fleeting vale.
Though thorns infest thy path, new blooms may yet unfold—
Turn from the void’s allure, its siren song too cold!”
But desperation’s wine hath drowned her reason’s shore;
She climbs the moss-stoned ledge where countless stepped before.
“I’ll write my epitaph in raindrops on this stone,
A testament to hearts the world hath left alone.
Let others learn from tides that rise but to retreat—
True freedom’s not in flight, but finding death’s bittersweet.”
One step—the bridge’s sigh blends with her final breath,
One heartbeat suspended ‘twixt oblivion and death…
The waters claim her swift, no monument, no sound,
The river, ever patient, wraps her ‘round and down.
Her struggles cease as currents teach her liquid peace,
While far above, the storm’s fierce anger starts to cease.
Dawn breaks—a timid blush on bridges old and worn—
Reveals where one soul fled, a rose upon the thorn.
Years pass. The stones endure, their cracks like wrinkles deep,
Guard secrets of the hearts they’ve watched in silence weep.
Some say on moonless nights when rains in torrents fall,
A woman’s voice still whispers liberty’s sweet call.
But most tread swift across, eyes fixed on safer ground,
Their ears deaf to the dirge in river’s ancient sound.
Thus ends the tragic tale of she who sought to find
In death’s cold arms the freedom life to her denied.
The bridge remains—a stage for mortal hopes and fears,
Where still the desperate dance to time’s unending tears.
Beware, O traveler, when storms obscure your way,
Lest freedom’s bitter cost become the price you pay.
