The Lingering Veil of Unspoken Dawns

Here, in this vault of silence, hangs the air
like cloth unpinned from time’s relentless loom,
each thread a dirge for loves that perished there,
each breath a ghost condemned to haunt the gloom.
The soul—if soul it be—that haunts these stones
once knew the pulse of blood, the warmth of name,
now wears the wind’s caress, the rain’s soft tones,
a melody sans lyre, a flame sans flame.

One eve, when dusk had drowned the sun’s last sigh
and stars lay strewn like salt on indigo,
a mortal footfall pierced the temple’s cry—
a scholar young, with eyes that thirst to know.
His lantern’s gasp licked frescoes long erased,
revealing nymphs whose dance no lyre commands,
their limbs stilled mid-revel, grace displaced,
yet in their stillness—yearning etched by hands.

The specter watched, a tremble in its core,
as fingers traced the tales in dust and grime,
each stroke a spark on memory’s frozen shore,
each glance a key to vaults sealed vast by time.
“What voice,” he mused, “once thrummed through hollowed halls?
What hands raised altars to the nameless sky?
What hearts, now ash, beat ‘gainst these crumbled walls,
whose echoes linger where the dead dreams lie?”

No answer came but rustling leaves’ deceit,
yet as he turned, a breath—not wind—brushed near,
a sigh that bore the weight of centuries’ defeat,
a presence shaped from absence, crystal-clear.
He froze, the air a web of silken frost,
and in the gloom, two embers faintly glowed—
not fire, but sorrow’s slow-consuming ghost,
a light that dwelt where no light should abode.

Thus began their dance of mute communion,
the scholar bound to day, the wraith to night,
each dusk he’d tread the path to lost dominion,
each dawn she’d fade, a star outblinked by light.
They spoke in tongues no mortal lips could frame—
through rustling scrolls, through shadows’ languid twine,
through petals shed where no rose dared claim fame,
through silent hymns pressed into crumbling shrine.

One twilight, bold with wine of stolen hours,
he whispered to the dark, “What keeps thee here?
What chain binds thee to this realm of wilted flowers,
where even grief grows old, and dust is seer?”
The air grew thick with anguish long distilled,
and on the wall, a fresco briefly bled—
a figure robed in mist, by love unfulfilled,
hands stretched toward a lover’s vanished head.

“I am the breath between the bell’s two tolls,
the pause before the swallow meets its dawn,
the shadow of a kiss that never stole
the warmth it sought, now centuries withdrawn.
Here, in this crypt where vows were rent asunder,
I loved a soul whose flesh was time’s first prey—
a guardian priestess, voice cleft by thunder,
her name erased, her essence turned to clay.”

He saw her then—not shadow, but a form
of liquid starlight veiled in sorrow’s gauze,
her eyes twin pools where tempests once brewed warm,
now frozen lakes no springtide dared to thaw.
“We met as day meets night in twilight’s hush,
two guardians of secrets never told,
her duty—tend the sacred flame’s warm blush,
mine—keep the temple’s chronicles of old.

Our glances wove a tapestry unseen,
each thread a risk, each knot a mute desire,
till hands dared brush where shadows lay between,
igniting sparks that leapt but could not fire.
For love, unbound by form, is but a wraith—
we dared not speak what stone and scroll forbade,
yet in the crypt where silence honed its faith,
our souls etched vows no sacrament could shade.”

The scholar knelt, his shadow frail and small,
“What broke the thread ere it could weave its course?”
A wind arose, a lament through the hall,
“The earth grew jealous of our ghostly force.
One night, as tremors split the altar’s heart,
she rushed to shield the flame—her sacred task—
a column fell where mortal and immortal part,
her body crushed, her spirit all I ask.

They sealed her name, her deeds, her final cry,
the temple’s shame—a priestess turned to dust—
and I, who breathed the last of her lullaby,
was cursed to dwell where both our worlds combust.
Now through these halls I drift, half-soul, half-rhyme,
seeking the echo of her voice’s chime.”

The scholar’s heart, a drum against its cage,
“What if her essence lingers, not yet flown?
What if these stones still guard her sacred page,
her spirit veiled where roots and ruins have grown?”
The wraith recoiled, a storm of ash and rue,
“To hope is but to drink from Lethe’s stream—
five hundred years I’ve searched each inch hewn true,
yet find but dust where her light once did gleam.”

But he, alight with youth’s untainted blaze,
scoured the crypt where earth and anguish wed,
pried up a slab concealed by time’s malaise,
revealed a niche where one lone rose lay dead.
Its petals, crisp as parchment, bore a stain—
a faded script in some lost tongue of woe,
and as he lifted it, the air grew sane
with scent of myrrh from centuries ago.

The wraith let forth a cry like shattered glass,
“Her hand once clasped this stem in final breath!
She oft would tend such blooms where sunbeams pass—
this is her requiem, unclaimed by death!”
Then came a tremor, soft as first tears fall,
the rose dissolved to motes of gold and gray,
which swirled to form a figure by the wall—
a priestess robed in dawn’s forbidden ray.

Their glances met—two shades of endless night,
yet in that pause, the temple’s heart resumed,
the frescoes bloomed, the columns stood upright,
the air thrummed with a melody exhumed.
No words they spoke, for tongues were rendered vain,
but light entwined where shadows once had dueled—
a dance of sparks, a fleeting, fragile chain,
two starved souls by time’s verdict overruled.

The scholar watched, his mortal breast transfixed,
as centuries of longing found their voice,
yet even as their essences commixed,
the temple groaned—the earth reclaimed its choice.
A crack splintered the vault where hope had soared,
the priestess dimmed, her light to embers drained,
the wraith’s lament a blade through flesh restored,
“Farewell, my shadowed heart, again enchained.”

Then all was still. The scholar stood alone,
the niche now void, the rose but motes in air,
the wraith dissolved to whispers, faintly known,
the priestess—gone where neither gods nor care
could follow. Moonlight wept on broken tiles,
the scholar’s tears the first rain in a waste,
as dawn’s grim fingers pried through ruined aisles
to find a heartache time could not erase.

Now travellers speak of voices intertwined
when midnight bleeds the temple’s stones to song—
a dirge for loves that light could never bind,
for hearts that beat where they do not belong.
And in the dust, some claim two shadows play,
brief as the moth that kisses flame and dies,
while scholars read the ruins’ bleak display—
a chronicle of goodbyes etched in sighs.