In the quiet beyond the world’s edge,
Where stars hang like unspoken words,
There resides a Keeper, cloaked in dusk,
Their hands woven from the fabric of silence.
They wander a hall of shimmering threads,
Each strand a prayer left unanswered.
Some glisten with tears,
Others hum with defiant hope,
And a few lie frayed, forgotten.
The Keeper listens—
not to the prayers themselves,
But to the ache wrapped around them,
The raw,
trembling notes of hearts
That whispered into the void.
One prayer,
a child’s voice:
“Bring him home safe.”
The Keeper cradles it like glass,
Tracing its fragile edges.
The soldier never returned,
But the memory of his laughter
Lives in the folds of her smile.
Another,
sharp as shattered glass:
“Take the pain away.”
The Keeper sets it gently on the shelf,
For pain,
too,
has roots that dig
Into the soil of what it means to live.
“Make them love me,”
One murmurs,
faint as a ghost.
The Keeper sighs,
wrapping it in light—
For love forced is not love at all,
But the echo of something broken.
They do not grant,
nor deny,
Only tend to these fragile offerings,
Preserving them in the eternal tapestry
Of longing and loss.
The Keeper whispers back,
though no one hears:
“Your prayers are not wasted.
Each word shapes the wind,
Each tear feeds the rivers,
Each sigh moves the stars.”
For even unanswered prayers
Leave their mark on the world,
Etching unseen constellations
In the vast and tender sky.
© 2024 Samantha Syrnich TLC
The Phoenix Quill: Words Born of Fire, Inked in Truth 