🕯️ The Widow's Lantern 🕯️

In a house where the ivy has swallowed the stone,
She walks by the dusk, forever alone.
Her hands hold a lantern of flickering red,
Lit by the breath of the long-forgot dead.

The mirrors are veiled, the clocks have no face,
Time lost its footing in that cursed place.
Each night she hums to a love now bone,
A lullaby stitched in a sepia tone.

She danced once in silks, by the chapel bell's cry,
But the vows turned to ash the moment he died.
Now moths are her bridesmaids, the wind her refrain,
And her tears etch lace on the windowpane.

No soul dares to enter, no priest speaks her name,
Yet the lantern still burns with an undying flame.
For some loves do not rot, they simply retire—
To the heart’s quiet crypt, wrapped in funeral fire.