The Spectral Ascent
Where frost-kissed cliffs embrace the sullen sky,
A soul adrift, unmoored from mortal chains,
Ascends the crags where silence ever reigns.
No footprints mark the virgin snow’s embrace,
No breath disturbs the air’s crystalline grace—
Yet through the veil of twilight’s somber hue,
A shadow treads, as whispers pierce the blue.
“O weary heart,” it sighs to winds austere,
“What solace lies in heights none dare draw near?
Why seek the peak where stars in mourning weep,
When love, once kindled, lies in slumbers deep?”
But onward climbs the specter, gaunt and pale,
Through tempests’ howl and gales that shred the veil.
Its form, a wisp of memory’s dim flame,
Still bears the weight of one unspoken name.
For in the vale below, where rivers freeze,
There dwelled once a light that sought to please—
A mortal’s smile, soft as dawn’s first blush,
Whose laughter turned the winter’s bite to hush.
Yet fate, that weaver of unyielding thread,
Had bound their paths where neither heart could tread.
No touch, no vow, no promise dared take root,
Lest sorrow’s thorns devour tender fruit.
“Look not upon my face,” the wraith had pled,
When first the mortal’s gaze its presence read.
“For I am but the echo of a cry
That lingers where forgotten dreamers lie.
To love me is to court the endless storm,
To bind your pulse to shadows, cold and worn.”
But ah, the mortal’s eyes, like embers bright,
Had glimpsed the soul behind the shroud of night.
Through fleeting days, they met in twilight’s shroud,
Where ice-flowers bloomed and auroras bowed.
No hand could clasp, yet spirit brushed spirit—
A dance of flames no law could disinherit.
The mountain watched, its ancient heart of stone
A sentinel to vows no lips had known.
“What madness binds you to this doomed affair?”
The blizzard roared, but neither turned from care.
Yet seasons shift, and mortal frames grow frail;
The soul, ageless, endured the endless gale.
One dusk, the human knelt on snow gone red,
A rose’s thorn had pierced where tears were shed.
“Farewell,” they breathed, “though flesh must yield to time,
In dreams I’ll scale these peaks, sublime, sublime.”
The wraith knelt too, its touch a zephyr’s sigh,
And wept a frost that dimmed the Northern Sky.
Now years have fled, but still the ghost ascends,
Each step a dirge for what it dare not mend.
The peak looms near—a throne of jagged ice—
Where final breaths crystallize in sacrifice.
“Behold,” it cries, “the summit’s bitter price:
To love in silence, pay in paradise.”
The gale responds with echoes of a song
That once two hearts had hummed, now one, now gone.
Its form dissolves, a mist of silvered pain,
Yet lingers where the cliffs embrace the plain.
The mountain keeps their tale in glacial scrolls,
A testament to souls who dared the poles.
And travelers who brave the frost’s cruel sting
May hear two voices on the zephyr’s wing—
One whispers winter’s unrelenting creed,
The other, love that blooms where none may heed.
