Thomas Miller's Blog - Posts Tagged "dark-verse"

“The Black Veins of Winter”

By Thomas Miller

London slept beneath a cough of soot,
the year of seventeen-forty-three,
when fever walked the cobblestone lanes
in silence thick as candle smoke.

He was a scholar once—ink-fingered, proud,
his books stacked high as gravestones.
But now his breath came shallow, thin,
a rattle echoing through cracked ribs.

The plague was not swift—it lingered,
like a lover who would not leave.
He felt it bloom within his chest,
a black rose bursting petal by petal,
until the taste of iron filled his mouth.

Blood spilled slow and sacred
down his chin, his collar,
onto the Bible he’d pressed to his heart.
Each drop a confession—
each gasp a hymn to no one listening.

Outside, the church bells tolled for others,
but none for him.
His neighbors sealed their doors,
the rats took communion in the alleys,
and the air itself became a sermon of decay.

He whispered once—to no one—
“Tell her I waited.”
Then the blood came faster,
flooding his lungs like the Thames at spring,
and his body shuddered in holy ruin.

When dawn crept through the frost,
they found him upright in his chair,
eyes open, as if still reciting
the last verse of his life.

No one spoke his name,
but the room remembered.
The candle guttered out,
and silence became his grave.