The Mariner’s Lament Upon the Shattered Isle

Here, memory gnaws the marrow from his bones:
A face half-seen in lantern-light’s frail glow,
A voice that lingered softer than the fog,
A hand he clasped as tempests tore the mast—
“Return,” she pled, “though waves conspire to lie.
The sea’s a thief, but you… you are the dawn.”
He kissed her palm and swore on every star,
“No storm shall claim the breath that bears your name.”

Yet now the stars are lepers, shunned by clouds,
And dawns here bleed to twilight’s hollow grin.
The isle, a cage of jagged melody,
Sings through the stones a dirge of shattered things:
The rusted hulls of ships that dared the depths,
The barnacled bones of men who swore as he,
Their tongues now coral, chanting in the gloam—
*No oath outruns the hunger of the abyss.*

Three seasons since the squall that broke his world:
The sky, unstitched by lightning’s silver blade;
The deck, a splintered altar to the gale;
His crew, once loud with life, now kelp and foam.
He clutched the locket cold against his chest—
Her portrait blurred by seawater and years—
And climbed the raft that bore him to this curse,
This realm where time unspools like rotting thread.

By day, he scans the horizon’s barren scroll,
His eyes raw from the ink of empty miles.
By night, he feeds the fire with driftwood ghosts,
Their smoke a language spiraling to naught.
The island breathes—its exhalations salt,
Its voice the wind’s low keen through fractured rock.
It dreams in tides, and in its dreams, he drowns:
Her voice, a siren’s wraith, through crashing hymns—
“You promised…” and the waves reply, “He lied.”

Once, in the grotto where the selkies weep,
He found a spring that mirrored not his face,
But showed a hearth where she still waits, her chair
A throne of patience worn by endless snow.
Her fingers trace the rim of his untouched cup,
Her tears the only steam that stirs the air.
He smashed the glass—yet still the vision clings,
A wound beneath the skin of every wave.

The cormorants, black-robed as mourning priests,
Cackle the liturgy of the forsaken.
Their wings, like palls, drape omens on the surf:
*No ship shall come. No sail shall cleave this grave.*
He carves her name in every splintered trunk,
But winds erode the letters into scars.
The locket’s chain, now green with ocean’s rust,
Leaves stains like bruises where his heartbeat falters.

At last, he climbs the pinnacle where cliffs
Gash heaven’s throat to drink the comet’s wine.
Below, the maelstrom churns its cyclic wrath,
A wheel of teeth and unrelenting foam.
Her voice ascends, no longer sweet, but steel:
“You swore to conquer tempests, yet you kneel?”
The locket gleams—one flash, then swallowed deep.
His arms, outstretched, embrace the storm’s cold spine—

The sea inhales. The rocks exult in red.
Far off, a hearth’s last ember sighs to ash.