The Storm-Kissed Knight: A Lament of Unspoken Tides

The sea, a ravening beast unleashed, spewed foam like curses cold,
As memories, more merciless than blade or blight, took hold:
A child he’d been, small and slight, where these same cliffs stood guard,
With eyes that drank the sapphire dawn and hands that clutched the shard

Of driftwood (sword to boyish dreams) while tides, his boon allies,
Whispered of realms beyond the mist where mortal glory lies.
But there, beside salt-stung rocks where gulls dared build their nests,
A girl with hair like kelp aflame became his heart’s first guest.

Young Maris, daughter of the cove, whose laughter mocked the squalls,
Who read the stars as scholars would and knew the siren’s calls.
No crown she wore but seafoam lace, no throne but weathered stone,
Yet in her gaze, the knight-to-be found more than kings had known.

“To what far port,” she’d ask, “shall Sir Gareth’s galleon sail?
What monsters will you vanquish when the poets tell your tale?”
And he, all bluster, boyhood’s pride, would swear by Neptune’s trident:
“I’ll carve your name on every isle from here to distant Tyndent!”

But time, that thief who steals the sun yet leaves the shadows long,
Transformed their games to guarded words, their ballads to a throng
Of silences. Her father’s boat (a widow’s fragile ark)
Could never dock in ports where knights and nobles moored their bark.

One eve, as autumn’s breath turned sharp and waves grew sullen, slow,
She pressed a conch into his palm—its spiral’s whispered glow.
“When next you hear the storm’s lament through this, my seashell lyre,
Know tides divide what hearts confide… yet some canst ne’er expire.”

He left at dawn. No farewells spoke. No tears (though cheeks were salted).
The horizon drank his ship’s dark hull as though the past were vaulted.
Decades passed: he felled tyrants, broke sieges, earned renown,
But ever at the battle’s lull, her voice would rise—drowned

Beneath war’s cacophony, yet clear as breakers’ sighs.
Now, old and weary of the sword, he meets where memory lies.
The cliffside crumbles. Midnight weeps. The conch, long kept with care,
Now trembles at his lips to wake the ghost that lingers there.

A mournful note—the shell’s lament—pierces the gale’s dark choir.
The sea inhales… then stills. The waves compose a liquid pyre.
From depths where light and shadow wed, a figure takes its form:
Not Maris as she was, but as time’s current could deform—

Her face, a moon through frosted glass; her voice, the reef’s low groan:
“Why summon me, oh storm-kissed fool? Why stir these ashes sown?
Our chapter closed when first you chose the road of blood and steel.
What phantom peace can drowned love find in graves the tides conceal?”

He falls to knees. The armor clangs like chains on fate’s own anvil.
“I sought to build a world worth gifting at your feet, a chapel
Of deeds to make a fisherman’s child a queen of legend’s stage!”
Her laughter, bitter as the brine: “You built your own cage.

For glory’s but a gilded noose, and honor, chains disguised.
While you chased echoes of renown, our truth—your heart’s—was prized
Apart. What use to me the spoils of wars I never urged?
You broke what waves and winds had spared… and all for honor’s dirge.”

The vision fades. The storm resumes with redoubled fury.
The conch, now cracked, lets slip its song to join the sea’s blind jury.
Sir Gareth grasps his rusted hilt (no foe but shadows here),
And plunges where the whirlpool’s maw devours pain and peer.

The dawn finds nothing on the shore but foam’s ephemeral lace,
A helm half-buried in the sand, a conch in death’s embrace.
Some say the tides still sing their wail through chambers pearly, deep—
A knight’s regret, a maiden’s scorn, and hearts the waves now keep.

Thus ends the tale in sorrow’s key, as all true tales must end
When love is caged by station’s chains and pride usurps the friend.
Let those who walk by ruthless shores heed well this tempest’s rhyme:
The greatest wars are never fought… but lost to silent time.