Whispers in the sand.

I wrote my heart where the sisals swayed,

Threads of longing in the roadside dust,

Hoping the wind would carry my name,

To the stream where her dreams were thrust.

She carried my verses like water in a calabash,

Each syllable rippling her quiet stream,

And when dusk fell heavy on my youthful nights,

Her reply became the marrow of my dream.

Her feet danced soft on the village path,

Reading my whispers etched in the sand,

Each word a seed in her gentle heart,

Each line a promise too frail to stand.

The sun would sink, and stars would rise,

Yet her silence spoke where words could not,

Her gaze, a river of untamed skies,

Held truths my youthful tongue forgot.

But the years, cruel years, stole our symphony,

Built walls where our whispers used to roam,

Her shadow slipped into the chasm of memory,

And I was left in the ruins of home.

Now, I walk paths haunted by fading footprints,

Trace the sisals, their messages erased,

The sand yields no echoes, no secret replies,

Yet I yearn for the smile that time displaced.

Time, the thief, stretched its shadow wide,

Widened the gulf between her and I,

Where once our footprints walked side by side,

Now only echoes of love passed by.

Seasons changed; the sisals grew tall,

Erasing the marks of a tender flame,

The sands near her home bore no recall,

Of the boy who wrote in love’s old name.

But still, my soul walks those silent trails,

Yearns for the spark of her fleeting glance,

Where once we weaved our innocent tales,

Now lies the grave of a lost romance.

Oh, to return, to rewrite the sand,

To hold her shadow before it fades,

But love, once lost, is a wandering strand,

A song the past alone has played.

©Bunguswa™