Public Executions

The square lay cold as a chapel tomb,

Where lanterns bled their wavering gloom.

The murmur of the waiting throng,

Felt like a forbidden song.

A rose through swirling mist,

A silhouette by twilight kissed.

Its timbers groaned like tired bones,

That carried centuries of moans.

The condemned were led through air,

Pale shapes of sorrow and despair.

Their shadows, stretched along the stones,

Walked farther than their trembling bones.

No cries were heard, no pleas were made,

Just whispered prayers that frayed and fade.

The figures stood in final rows,

Like phantoms poised in death’s repose.

A hush fell deep, too deep to bear

As though the world forgot to care.

The wind refused to breathe or sway,

And time itself slipped cold away.

Then silence broke, but not with sound,

Instead, a stillness shook the ground.

A moment ended, none knew when,

Yet all stepped back as different men.

The scaffold stood in spectral light,

A monument to vanished night.

And though the square grew empty soon,

Its ghost whispered of the noon.