It's Still Life

9 of 27: Echobane – the vow that outlived you — A long-form liturgy poem (2 minute read)

Intro: Some vows are broken. Others linger. Echobane is what remains when a promise keeps haunting the room long after the voice that made it is gone.

I. The Haunting
The house learned your voice before I did—
how it pooled in the gutters like August rain,
how it clung to the bathtub’s curve
long after the water drained,
how to love and to cherish
curled under the floorboards
like a snake
shedding its skin
inside-out.

I scrubbed.
I salted.
I burned rosemary, chanted backward,
waited for nothing to feel clean.
I opened every window.
Still, your vows grew back
like mould on bread meant for sacrament
I never took.

(Mum said watermelon seeds would sprout in my belly.
I believed her.
I believed you too.)

II. The Grave
Grey that day.
Grey like a tarnished spoon.
Grey like the Styx standing still in the tub.
Grey like the faces I don’t remember—
just their hands,
shovelling sorry into the dirt
like pennies for the ferryman.

I wore black.
Black is a shade of almost.
Almost grief. Almost rage.
Almost well, fuck you
stuck in my teeth
like a rind
I couldn’t swallow.

(The seeds, though—
those I spat out.
Small rebellions
are still holy.)

III. The Echo
It wasn’t wind.
It was you—
your voice unspooling
from the eaves at midnight,
your love—your cherish—
now just a noose of syllables
I couldn’t tighten
or cut loose.

I remarried.
I am happy.
But happiness is a house
with too many doors.

And sometimes?
Sometimes the wrong one
blows open.

IV. Felreil’s Footnote
He hears it in the hollows of second marriages,
in the way a new ring shines
almost bright enough
to drown out the old one’s ghost.

He doesn’t judge.
He only listens—
to the way the wind
carries both your voices now:
the living, the dead,
the I do, the you didn’t,
the love that stayed
and the love that left
before the story
was done.

He names the duality—
new ring, old ghost;
living, dead.
He sees not just a broken vow,
but the shattered thing
that outlived the breaker.

Felreil’s Whisper (A Rare Smile)
He tucks the well, fuck you
into his watch—
his watch with no hands—
to remember how
some silences
earn their cracks.

He doesn’t keep time—
only memory.