Ashes to Ashes, Flame to Flame

Burned in Salem for loving her executioner, a witch vows to rise in another life - to find him, and make him remember.

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In Salem town, where shadows stretch,
Beneath the gallows, cold and bare,
Where whispers haunt the wooden steps,
And smoke still clings to midnight air,
There lived a girl with raven eyes,
Who spoke to stars and sang to crows,
She danced where secret rivers run,
And knew what only silence knows.

They called her witch, a cursed breed,
For herbs she ground and spells she wove,
But she was healer, dreamer, flame,
Who lived by moonlight in the grove.
She bore no malice, brewed no blight,
Yet still the village turned to blame -
The fever of the godly few
Had hung her life upon her name.

Among the righteous, cruelly stern,
There walked a man with eyes like dusk,
Enforcer wrapped in holy cloth,
With breath that carried smoke and rust.
He read aloud her fate one dawn,
Voice trembling through the sermon’s cry,
And though he bound her hands with rope,
There burned a sadness in his eye.

For once, in shadows of the wood,
Before the pyres, before the trial,
She touched his cheek with haunted grace
And held his gaze for just a while.
She whispered truths that made him pale,
Of lives once lived in dreams and dust,
Of how she’d known him in the dark
Before the world had learned to trust.

He tried to hide the soul he lost,
Behind a book, beneath a name,
But still her voice would haunt his breath,
And guilt would flicker in his flame.
She knew his heart, the boy he was,
The tender ache beneath the steel,
And though he swore to God and men,
He could not help the things he’d feel.

Upon the day they stoked the pyre,
And clothed her in a linen white,
She stood not frail, nor wept, nor broke,
But met the dawn with fierce delight.
He tied the knot with shaking hand,
And met her gaze - she didn’t flinch.
She smiled and said, “You’ll see me soon -
Reborn in fire, inch by inch.”

“They think this ends me? Let them cheer.
Let holy hands throw cursed stones.
But mark me, love, I’ll walk again,
And you shall know me by my bones.
You’ll meet me when the world is strange,
In crowded streets, or woods unseen,
You’ll feel me in your blood again,
A whisper carved between the screams.

I’ll come with flame behind my eyes,
With autumn smoke upon my breath,
To kiss the hand that struck me down,
And make a lover out of death.
You’ll see me in the red of leaves,
In storms that rattle chapel doors,
You’ll dream of me through centuries,
And wake with salt upon your sores.”

Then flame rose high and cried her name,
And townsfolk watched with silent dread.
But he, he watched with breaking soul,
The smoke entwined around his head.
He never spoke of what he felt,
He drank the dark to drown the truth.
Yet still she came in dreams each night,
A blazing girl in endless youth.

Years passed. He aged, grew pale and thin,
While Salem shifted in its sleep,
But in his room, alone and cold,
He’d sometimes sit and softly weep.
He swore he felt her near at dusk,
He swore he heard her laugh in fire,
And every storm that split the sky
Revived her promise, fed his ire.

He died with lips that knew her name,
With candle burning low and red,
And somewhere far, in distant time,
She woke again, no longer dead.
With boots of ash and eyes like stars,
She walks where neon lights may bloom,
Through metal skies and city dust,
Where mem’ries breathe inside a room.

And he is here, reborn and blind,
A skeptic soul, a sleepless man,
But in her gaze, he feels the burn
Of something lost b’fore it began.
She finds him in a crowded bar,
Or passing train, or stranger’s door,
And when he looks, his pulse recalls
The rope, the flame, the oath she swore.

She says, “You knew I’d come again.
You knew I wouldn’t let it lie.
This world may dress in steel and glass,
But love still rises when we die.
And you, my judge, my burning priest,
My killer with the tearless vow,
You’ll love me deeper than before.
And you will answer to me now.

So let the centuries erase
The names we spoke, the skin we knew.
Love forged in flame does not forget -
It only waits to burn anew.”