The Orphan’s Lament: A Bridge Through Time
Where tempests carve their sorrows into stone,
A bridge of moss-clad arches stoops and sighs,
Its spine bent low by centuries alone.
Through veils of rain that cloak the world in grey,
A figure treads, his shadow frail and worn—
An orphan lad, whose heart, in disarray,
Seeks truths the winds of fate have long outborne.
His name, once whispered by a mother’s breath,
Now drowns in echoes down the river’s throat.
No hearth remains to shelter him from death,
No kin to mend the tatters of his coat.
Yet in his palm, a locket, cold and dim,
Preserves a face time dared not let him know—
A woman’s smile, a portrait etched on trim,
Whose eyes ignite the embers of his woe.
“O Memory, thou merceless, double-edged blade,
Why carve thy marks upon this orphan’s breast?
Why grant me glimpses of a sunlit glade,
Then rend the vision, leave my soul unblessed?”
So speaks the boy, his voice a shattered hymn,
To shadows dancing on the water’s face.
The Seine below, a serpent sleek and grim,
Conspires with time to mock his frantic chase.
Three nights he’s knelt upon this rain-soaked ledge,
Deciphering the river’s cryptic song,
While phantom barges, drifting past the edge,
Bear ghosts of laughter he’s pursued so long.
“They say,” he murmurs, “when the moon grows pale,
The dead may tread once more this mortal shore.
O Father, Mother, let your faces frail
Break through the mist! Deny me not once more!”
A sudden stillness steals the storm’s harsh breath;
The waters smooth like glass beneath the bridge.
From silvered depths ascends a realm of death—
A spectral town where clocktowers crown a ridge.
Its cobbled streets, alive with lantern-glow,
Teem with the shades of centuries long spent.
There, two figures pause, their movements slow,
Their hands entwined in tender lament.
“Behold!” The orphan gasps, his blood turned ice,
“Their eyes—her smile—the locket’s captured grace!”
He leans, half-maddened, o’er the parapet’s vise,
While rain resumes its fierce, relentless race.
“Come back!” he wails. “What cruel jest is this?
To show me all I crave, yet bar the way!”
The vision shimmers, taunting with a kiss
Blown from a mother’s lips, then fades to grey.
Aged beggar, crouched beneath the arch’s curve,
Observes the youth with sockets hollow-burned.
“Thy grief,” he croaks, “the river doth observe,
But what is drowned can never be returned.
I too once sought to bargain with the tide,
To pluck my past from Time’s insatiate maw.
See here the price—” His skeletal hand cried
A thousand sorrows in its palsied claw.
Undeterred, the boy withdraws a blade,
Its edge honed sharp by nights of desperate thought.
“If blood can make the veil of death degrade,
Then let my life-force buy the truth I’ve sought.”
One crimson stroke across his trembling wrist,
One ruby stream to stain the Seine’s dark flow.
The waters boil; through mist and rain-streaked tryst,
The phantom city’s lamps again burn low.
Now sprinting down the quay’s decaying stairs,
His lifeblood mingling with the river’s tears,
He dashes where the ghostly crowd repairs—
A living soul through dead men’s hemispheres.
“Mother!” The cry tears from his ravaged throat,
As through the throng he spies her azure gown.
She turns—her face, a rose without a mote,
Her arms outstretched as shadows press him down.
“My child…” Her voice, a melody half-known,
Splinters the air like dawn’s first fragile light.
“What madness bids thee walk this path alone?
The mortal and the dead may not unite.”
He stumbles, grasping at her fading sleeve,
“Take me with you! Let not your arms withdraw!”
Her spectral fingers through his palm deceive,
“The door swings but one way—by Death’s grim law.”
Behind her stands a man of quiet strength,
Whose eyes mirror the boy’s own haunted gaze.
“Our blood runs in thy veins, its course, its length,
But tread no further through this lethal maze.
Return, dear son, to sunlight’s warm caress,
Let not our tragedy become thine own.”
The orphan weeps, “What sun can heal this ache?
What dawn awaits when all I love is gone?”
The river groans; the vision starts to fray—
Stone by stone, the phantom city crumbles.
“Farewell…” Her whisper fades into the spray,
As Time’s great wheel once more resumes its tumble.
The boy collapses on the sodden ground,
His life now ebbing with the scarlet tide.
Above, the bridge’s ancient stones resound
With echoes of the kiss she once denied.
The beggar limps to where the lad lies still,
And folds the child’s hands o’er silent breast.
“Thy truth was bought with thine own mortal will—
Rest now, where weary souls find final rest.”
But as he speaks, the locket snaps apart,
Its portrait claimed by ravenous dark waves.
The river bears the relic from his heart,
And seals the tomb no earthly hand can raze.
Thus ends the orphan’s quest beneath the rain,
Where past and present merge in sorrow’s stream.
The bridge remains, its stones imbued with pain,
A testament to love’s impossible dream.
And travelers who cross its arches high
Report a voice that mingles with the breeze—
A mother’s lullaby, a child’s last sigh,
Entwined like vines among the rustling trees.
So heed this tale, all ye who seek to find
The hidden paths to what is long erased:
The past is but a shadow in the mind,
And love, once lost, can never be replaced.
Let Time’s swift river bear its burdens hence—
To drink its poisoned waters is to die.
The orphan’s bridge still whispers his defense:
“All beauty born of love must kiss the sky… and fly.”
“`
