The cursed lantern glimmered in a village swallowed by the night,
Where moonlight dared not tread,
The lantern swayed with ghostly light,
Its flame was a spectral thread.
Beneath the sky of ink and fear,
The lantern’s glow revealed,
A dance of shadows drawing near,
In silent, haunted reels.
On cobbled streets and through the mist,
Where echoes seemed to breathe,
The lantern showed what once was kissed,
By fate, in shadows wreathed.
Each flicker told a tale of woe,
Of lives entwined in pain,
A family’s sorrow, long ago,
Their stories were lost in the rain.
The whispers arose from empty graves,
From echoes deep and cold,
Their shadows stretched, and souls were entrapped,
Into tales forever untold.
In darkened alleys, secrets were clinging,
The past breathed with each sway,
Unsettling scenes the lantern brought,
As night consumed the day.
A flower wept by ancient trees,
A leaf’s laughter faded,
In ghostly scenes and memories,
The lantern’s light invaded.
And when the dawn began to break,
The lantern dimmed away,
In a gloom where spirits stirred,
The curses that had ever lingered.
Beneath the spectral light it cast,
The village’s heart grew still,
Each haunting vision from the past,
Fulfilled a darkened will.
Through misty veils and shadows deep,
The lantern showed the way,
A spectral guide that could not sleep,
As night erased the day.
The eerie glow revealed lost scenes,
Of lives once full of cheer,
Now trapped within the lantern’s beams,
Bound by sorrow and fear.
A flower wept by ancient trees,
A leaf’s laughter faded,
In ghostly scenes and memories,
The lantern’s light invaded.
In every flicker, every flare,
The village’s fate was sealed,
A tale of loss, of endless care,
By shadows ever revealed.
Its light was a beacon of the past,
Where spectral voices sighed,
The lantern’s curse, a shadow cast,
In every tear, it cried.
Esther Elizabeth Racah
