✨ ❤️  Love After Life

bymisst

The spirit drifts upon the wind,
Still seeking former life;
Its gnarled hands clutch at twisted trees
And wander through the night.

Warm light spills out from village homes
It watches, cold and clear;
It peers through windows of the living
At truths it cannot bear.

Through hollows cut in timbered walls
Its spectral shape appears;
The temperature falls, the clocks stand still,
As if in mortal fear.

His wife lies sleeping on the couch,
Her breath a trembling mist;
He bends to cup her fragile face
And brush the lips he’s missed.

The eaves, they shiver and they creak,
The fields lie cold and stark;
Yet in the quiet of the night,
Her love returns—a spark.

She pulls the blanket closer ‘round,
Then sees within the glass
A kiss still warm upon her lips
A touch that seems to last.

The shadows stir, the dog awakes,
The children safely dream;
She shivers as the icy air
Disturbs her midnight seam.

She gazes deep into the dark,
And there she sees a light;
It shimmers soft, it beckons her
Into the silver night.

She wraps the blanket round her tight,
And follows where it went;
It drifts aloft and upward
To the churchyard’s cold relent.

The gates, they groan and open wide
To crypts and tombs of old;
She stands, serene, unafraid,
Before a glow of gold.

And through the dimness of the night
She sees him kneel beside
His grave of stone and silent earth
The church where she’s his bride.

His lips form words she cannot hear,
A tongue she’s never known;
She steps in closer—then he fades,
And she’s again alone.

A single rose lies on the grave,
As red as dragon’s blood;
She kneels and weeps for her lost love,
And falters in the mud.

Then suddenly her eyes fly wide
It all had been a dream;
Yet still she shivers, for the rose
Glows soft in moonlit beams.

Upon the sill it rests, ice-cold,
And shining like a star;
She smiles, for now she knows his love
Was never truly far.