Listen to poem:
Elegy of Broken Promises
Written: June 27, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Silent One
Quote: "Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a thousand times. Come, yet again, come." By Rumi
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In the quietest corner of my mind's echo
rests a drawer laden with broken vows,
each one a shattered syllable,
a shard of yesterday’s certitude —
glinting like glass in ashen gleam.
Here rests a drawer of failed vows
a dim cosmos, a cluster of broken orbs,
each vow, a comet's trail, carving my shape,
echoing with hushed appeal of unsent letters—
their ink bleeding onto shredded dreams.
Silent orisons we dared not cast aloud.
In the drawer, every promise broken,
an altar to unfulfilled dreams,
where candle flames turn to ash,
cold and still —
forever’s ashes, hushed and silent, rest.
With a shadowed dawn, my soul wanders,
half asleep, half alive —
as if, on the day you left your last breath,
you bore mine as well,
leaving a hollow echo,
lost in a world I no longer believe.
My sturdy foundations, like pillars in a faithless place,
tumbled, as vows crumble to dust, incense,
the sanctuary shivers, prayers fall silent —
the universe that crumbled under its own broken vows.
After all, a promise is a thin thread of hope,
frayed at the touch, lost when one lets it go.
I remember the night, candles' glow a promise,
hands quivered, as I vowed love, hoping —
to share life's pulse, until mine grew still.
But fate, fickle and fierce, turned its face;
another claimed her, and my confession crumbled —
like wings crushed, mid-flight.
I set her free, but the wound never mended.
Yet, the world spins with hollow talk and false love,
promises of safety with hollowed hearts—
lips that never spoke the truth.
You vowed to shield me — from her, from pain —
but words turned to waves, and you let me sink,
a purity unboarded, a raft adrift.
Now, I merely exist, a living shadow
a pawn in stormy blame's game—
an heirloom of an untold sorrow.
Your broken promise plunged my heart into ice.
Yet I envy your roving freedom among ruins —
blind and delighted in my broken fantasies.
You muttered of forever, yet forever
is a fiction that dies with breath;
too weighty for a person to fathom.
A beguiling falsehood, a glittering chimera,
a promise that shatters —
with the breath of doubt.
So I collect these remnants —
the vows, the lies, the breathless loss,
unfulfilled innocence, the sharp ache —
and gently lay them in the drawer
of shattered vows, closing it softly
to silence the spectral whispers.
And in that silence, I discovered myself anew—
silent toughness.
and a touch of the unspoken.
Now I am silence's riddle.
But maybe, — perhaps, it's not as it appears.
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