Juliana Hoffmann liska Poet Clerihew

In August of 1889 - juliana hoffmann liska

In August of 1889,
the fog arrived before the moon.

It curled around the cemetery gates
like pale fingers searching for forgotten names,
and the candles trembled
inside the windows of old houses
where women still waited for letters
that would never return.

You wore black velvet that evening.
I remember because the rain
had touched the hem of your dress,
and the scent of wet roses followed you
through the narrow streets
like a ghost unwilling to leave.

We spoke beside a wooden table
covered in tarot cards and melted wax.
The room breathed silence.
Only the clock moved—
slow as a dying heartbeat.

You turned over the first card:
The Lovers.

But your hands shook
as if love itself were a curse
written long before our births.

Outside, horses dragged their shadows
through the mist of August,
and somewhere distant
a church bell mourned the hour.

I asked if you believed
souls could remain trapped
inside unfinished love stories.

You did not answer.

Instead, you lit another candle.

Its flame painted gold across your face,
and for one impossible second
you looked eternal—
not like a woman of 1889,
but like someone
who had already died once for love.

The final card waited between us.

Death.

Not violent.
Not cruel.
Only inevitable.

You smiled then, softly,
the way abandoned cathedrals smile
when moonlight enters their broken windows.

“Perhaps,” you whispered,
“some people are born only to haunt each other.”

The fog thickened.
The candles bent low.
And the night swallowed your name
before I could say it one last time.

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