The Wraith of Unkept Vows

The city, gaunt, its marrow long since drained,
Lies strewn in skeletal repose—a grave
Where echoes hum of promises profaned,
And winds recite the oaths none sought to save.
Here, memory’s a blade that carves the air,
And every shadow wears a face once known:
A king? A knave? A lover’s tender stare?
The wraith recalls, yet walks its path alone.

* * *

Once, in an age when lanterns lit the dusk
And laughter rang where now the ravens croak,
This phantom wore a cloak of mortal dusk,
A heart that beat, a voice that dared to spoke.
“Beloved,” pled a figure, young and fair,
Beneath the arch where lilies kissed the stream,
“When war descends and steel devours the air,
I’ll carve a path through hell to find your gleam.”

But war, that fickle mistress, danced her tune—
Her drums tore through the valley’s verdant throat,
And he who swore beneath the honeyed moon
Now donned a helm, his love a distant note.
The wraith (then maiden, soft as dawn’s first tear)
Clung to his vow like ivy to the wall,
While cannons roared and smoke choked out the year,
And hope grew gaunt, a beggar in the squall.

* * *

Years bled to dust. The banners fell to rust,
Yet still she paced the ramparts, eyes ablaze,
Scanning the roads where shadows bred mistrust,
Her hands grown rough with counting endless days.
“He’ll come,” she hissed, though neighbors called her mad,
Their pity sharp as winter’s frosted nail.
“The world’s a web of lies, but he is clad
In honor’s steel! His word shall never fail!”

But seasons wheeled, relentless in their tread,
And brought no clang of spurs, no familiar tread.
The city choked on ash, its glory shed—
A carcass picked by time’s unyielding spread.
One eve, as plague’s black wings smothered the sun,
She stumbled where the river’s song ran thin,
And there, beneath the willows’ wilted fun,
Found proof of love’s defeat: his dagger, sin.

* * *

The hilt, once bright with sapphires’ liquid blue,
Now caked in mud and blood’s accusing stain,
Lay nestled near a bone no shroud could rue—
A skeletal hand, still clenched in futile strain.
No note, no lock of hair, no final plea,
Just steel that spoke a truth she’d die to mute:
Her knight had fled, not slain by enemy,
But by the cowardice that rots the root.

She laughed then—sound that froze the crawling mist—
And hurled the blade into the river’s heart.
“Let vows be drowned, as flesh from bones is kissed!
Let trust be damned, and fools be torn apart!”
Yet as she cursed, the plague-kissed winds replied,
Their tongues laced with the poison of the void,
And down she fell, her fate by grief supplied,
Her last breath sworn to roam, never destroyed.

* * *

Now, centuries distilled to bitter vapor,
She haunts the ruins where her faith was bled,
Replaying scenes like some eternal caper
Where love is both the script and dagger’s head.
At times, she’ll pause where market stalls once thrived,
And phantom scents of rose and loaves arise,
Or glimpse a child’s grin, half-recognized,
Before it fades, leaving her hollow eyes.

She speaks to bricks: “You saw his traitor’s flight!”
She chalks her rage on walls that list and sigh.
The stars, her sole confessors in the night,
Bear witness as she screams at Godless sky.
Yet heaven’s mute—no thunder rolls its blame,
No angel stoops to mend her fractured tale.
The dark consumes her like a wraith-shaped flame,
And dawn but paints her prison without veil.

* * *

One dusk, a traveler, lost and tempest-tossed,
Stumbles upon the city’s crumbling gate.
His eyes, though young, bear epochs’ chilling frost,
His stride a mirror of her knight’s lost gait.
The wraith, a tempest in her soul’s decay,
Surges—a storm of ash and shattered vows—
“You!” shrieks the air, “Why kneel you not to pay
For oaths you snapped like twigs beneath your ploughs?”

The stranger freezes, not in fear, but awe,
As spectre solidifies from swirling gray.
“I seek no ghost,” he breathes, “nor war’s false law,
But one who vanished ere my first sun’s ray.
A mother, fierce as tides, with chestnut hair,
Who paced these stones in vigil for her lost…
They say her grief birthed nightshade in the air,
That even death could not dismiss her cost.”

* * *

The wraith recoils—a leaf in hurricane.
The youth bears *her* nose, *his* defiant brow.
Time’s puzzle shifts; her agony’s red rain
Falls inward, flooding truths she’ll not allow.
“Lies!” swirls her voice, though tremors rend her form,
“He fled, a cur! His bones lie cold, unwept!”
The stranger grips a locket, weathered warm,
And clicks it ope—a face she’d wept, accept.

*Her* face. Not as she is, but as she was—
A smile unbroken, eyes with stars enmeshed.
Beneath, a curl of hair (their son’s, because
The hue is dawn-lit, as the boy’s now freshed).
“He died,” the youth insists, “not in retreat,
But buying time for those he’d sworn to shield.
They found him ringed by seven corpses’ heat,
Your name the sword his fading lips did wield.”

* * *

The wraith dissolves—a scream without a throat.
The stones absorb her centuries of spite.
Had she misread the dagger’s silent note?
Had love, in fact, died *well* that final night?
The locket glints, a truth she cannot bear,
Her eternal rage a pyre built on sand.
The traveler kneels, pours wine in arid air,
Then leaves a rusted ring in dust’s pale hand.

* * *

Now, when the moon hangs low, a silver sickle,
A shape drifts where the river’s bones are dry,
Digging through mud with fingers fickle, fickle,
Seeking a dagger lost to reason’s eye.
Some nights she wails—a sound that cracks the stars—
Others, she cradles air, a phantom child,
While city’s ruins, choir to her scars,
Repeat the vows that folly once defiled.

And thus she walks, a lesson carved in mist:
That trust, once split, rebuilds in twisted forms,
That ghosts are born where love and doubt persist,
And tragedy is pact ‘twixt wounds and storms.
Her end? There’s none. The stars won’t grant her peace.
She’s oath’s debris, love’s shipwreck on the shoal—
A wraith forever clawing for release,
Yet bound to realms where broken hearts patrol.