Cottage Chronicles

Desert

A/N: Does everything change with time? Yes they do, for both better and worse . This is the tale of a woman, whose love changed  for the worse, leaving her in the vast cruel desert.

The hottest winds of the desert struck my face,

Bringing me to reality, from jewels and lace.

I looked around thinking, 'Where is my oasis?

Was my love just a mirage?

A castle on sand, a treacherous panache?'

I asked the thorns, the dunes and the sun's fiery blaze,

Standing still in the middle of this whirlwind daze,

As my eyes formed a tearful haze.

My hands clung to a dead dream, a withered corsage,

A burnt picture in a treasured montage.

My throat was on fire like burning ice,

And as the dust blew into my eyes,

I recalled how you played me to your dice.

My heart smouldered in that loveless winter,

As I stumbled, not on snow but burning cinders.

Stinging tears rolled down, bead by bead,

As I reached for you in those times of need.

Still unable to comprehend, where I'd lost your lead;

I helplessly looked up, at the same blue, cloudless sky,

Sobbing voiceless, yet screaming so high.

Just when the sun began to descend,

I prayed for that nightmare to end,

Somehow still in love, to even properly comprehend.

But soon all my hopes crumbled before me,

Like your words of deceptive falsity.

I had sown my love and roses in this land.

With my tears, I had watered every grain of sand;

While counting years for the rain to mend my wounded hands.

Even when all my flowers, grew back as thorns,

I kept on searching for your merest shadow or form.

But this time you didn't return and left me there to bleed,

Just like all those times, you'd payed me no heed.

The coldest winds of this desert struck me with lightning speed.

In the air of that unlit night, dry as a bone and freezing like ice,

My body whimpered to die as my soul was sliced .

But I saw a blooming cereus in the dark,

The wind's roar, now a feeble whistle, I could no longer hark;

To which my charred heart sang like a cage- freed lark.

I set my blistered feet in the cool, soothing sand,

Trying to reach this unknown miracle of this unknown land.

Amidst the thorns, I touched those petals,

That remained white and pure even in these torturous hells.

The sweet fragrance at odds with all the devils

I'd fought, in this land so strange;

Where thorns give clarity at pain's exchange!

~ Feronia Grey