The Cathedral’s Silent Confession

The cathedral’s breath, a murmur through the stones,
Recalls the weight of centuries’ muted groans,
While stained glass saints, in hues of sorrow dyed,
Cast fractured tales of grace and mortal pride.

Her eyes, twin pools where twilight’s grief resides,
Trace carvings worn by time’s unyielding tides—
A knight’s stark helm, a rose with petals sere,
And angels weeping frozen, crystal tears.

Here, long ago, beneath this vaulted dome,
She dreamt of hands that bore a future’s tome,
Of whispers shared where incense coiled like breath,
And vows entwined more steadfast than stark death.

But years, relentless, spun their threadbare guise,
And left her soul a map of scarred goodbyes.
The echoes of her youth, now faint, now gone,
Lie buried where the crypts keep watch till dawn.

A locket rests, unclasped, against her breast—
A face within, by time’s rough hand distressed.
Its gilded edge, once bright as promise’s flame,
Now dulls beneath the burden of her shame.

“Oh, specter of the past,” she breathes, her voice
A rustling leaf that trembles without choice,
“What truth have you unearthed in shadowed deeps,
Where memory’s thorn unceasing vigil keeps?”

No answer stirs the silence, vast and old,
Save distant drips like tears the walls withhold.
Yet in the nave, a figure cloaked in gray
Emerges—phantom of some veiled dismay.

His eyes, two embers smoldering with rue,
Meet hers, and ancient sorrows surge anew.
“Eleanor,” he sighs, a name half-erased,
A chord plucked once from melodies effaced.

She falters, clutching chill and carven pew,
As decades crumble, frail as morning dew.
“You live,” she whispers, “though the churchyard’s mold
Claimed all I loved. What trick of time unfolds?”

“I walked the earth,” he mourns, “yet ne’er departed,
Bound by a lie that left us broken-hearted.
They swore you’d spurned the pledge we sealed with tears—
A forged farewell to feed my wasting years.”

The air grows thick with centuries’ compacted dust,
Each mote a life, a hope, a betrayed trust.
“I waited here,” she cries, “till youth’s flame died,
While you, my ghost, in foreign lands abide?”

His hand, translucent, reaches—cold as rain
That slicks the stones where mourners numb with pain—
“The letter, penned in malice, stole our spring.
I learned too late… beneath death’s raven wing.”

A wren, trapped in the clerestory’s maze,
Beats frantic wings against the roseate haze,
Its panic mirrored in her heaving breast
Where now the locket lies, a leaden pest.

“Then fate,” she gasps, “has carved us both its jest,
To meet where vows were made, now dispossessed.
What grave confines you, that you haunt this place?”
“The sea,” he mourns, “my bones its cold embrace.”

The final stroke of twilight’s crimson blade
Slips through the west, where stained glass saints cascade
Their ruby anguish on the transept floor—
A tide of blood through memory’s cracked door.

“One night,” he breathes, “as tempests tore the mast,
Your name was both my dirge and anchor’s cast.
The waves claimed all save this—” From folds, he draws
A locket twin to hers, sans flaw or pause.

Two faces, youth’s bright fire in each line,
Now stare as strangers through the veil of time.
“Yours kept,” she weeps, “while mine… a portrait charred
The night despair convinced me you’d discard…”

The dusk descends, a shroud of indigo,
As starlight stitches wounds the day cannot sew.
“Forgive,” he pleads, his form begins to fade,
“The living may not dwell where ghosts are made.”

She clutches at the air, now void, now still,
Her anguish pooling where the transept’s chill
Devours the warmth of might-have-been’s sweet lie—
A future snatched by hands they cannot spy.

The locket falls, its chain a shattered thread,
Two fractured hearts, their secrets vainly shed.
She kneels, a supplicant to ruthless years,
And drinks the draught of truth—too late, too dear.

Above, the wren still beats its wildered flight,
A soul unmoored from day’s diminishing light.
Her breath shall join the stones’ eternal sigh,
As shadows claim the vaults where dreamers lie.

Dawn finds her still, a marble effigy,
Her brow adorned with frost’s pale filigree.
Two lockets rest, entwined in dust’s embrace—
A silent ode to love’s untimely grace.

And still the saints in glass endure their woe,
Their hues less bright than centuries ago.
The cathedral keeps its counsel, deep and wise,
While ghosts of dreams in shadowed corners rise.