Light and Shadow

This is my submission for the The Halls of Pandemonium day eight prompt from Bradley Ramsey, as per the picture below:

I’ve tried to blend styles as well as genres, so we’ll see how it works:

We play both in and out of class,
we run, we play, we’re free.
We'll be best friends forever more,
I know I'm right, you'll see

Football, rounders, games at school,
on fields and in the park.
We all go swimming in the pool,
then play 'til it gets dark.

We have sleepovers, midnight feasts,
a childhood full of fun.
Such never ending energy,
we run and run and run.

Though we do drift, as time slips by
there's things instead of play.
Study, romance, we all grow up,
some of us move away.

Then met a girl in high school,
I wanted her for life
I'll stop this little rhyme just now,
but she became my wife.

Oh how I loved her,
we met by a vending machine.
School canteen.
Dates at Nandos.

Not romance in the Shakespearian way,
but it was ours.

All spare time spent together,
our friends would tease.
They never saw us any more,
eyes only for each other.

We went to the same college,
started working when we left,
similar jobs, similar places.


Renting a flat together,
always looking for a getaway.
France, USA, Mexico
places at home too.

Our adventures.

Living together was better than they said
Then negative ones said
it would finally bring to an end
the idyllic phase.

They were wrong.

Never a real argument.
Find each other's company bliss.
We were more than a cliché.
We'd start each other's sentences.

We were synchronised.

Intertwined.

Then engaged.

I think you expected it
under the Eiffel Tower.
I Surprised you instead
with flights to New York.

Popped the question,
top of the Empire State.
A night I'll always remember.
Your eyes glittered in the moonlight.

Our marriage a huge affair.
Packed without families.
My ten or so relatives,
150 of yours from all over.

You, so beautiful, blue
flecks in your white dress.
As radiant as one could be
more than I had ever known.

Storms and rain were forecast all week.
They even halted for you.

Then came the honeymoon,
the manor house we'd always loved
entire woodland behind us.
Memories that never fade.

Though not the way imagined.

The first couple of days
we didn't venture too far.
Though on day three we
hiked deep into the woods.

It was a cold misty, drizzly Tuesday
a day my memories will always save
you were excited in a vibrant way,
you'd dreamed of visiting the 'hidden' cave

Didn't take us long, we got lost in there;
after just ten minutes looking around.
We'd stumbled into some sort of dark lair
suddenly you were bleeding, on the ground.

A fearsome shadow beast above you, loomed,
then swallowed you whole, though it kept your head
It slashed my face, I believed I was doomed,
though it then turned around and simply fled.

Now I sit at night, thoughts haunt me from dawn
No grave to visit. I just sit and mourn.

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