Prisoner of Fate

Prisoner of Fate
Footsteps echoed in the stone corridor,
fading, growing distant...
as their source moved farther and farther away,
carrying with them one man's hope of salvation.
Iron bars still rung from when they had been slammed,
shutting that man off from an escape,
casting their tall shadows to the cold floor to which he was chained.
Wrists bound to ankles,
ankles bound to an iron ring in the ground.
A prisoner not only to this cell, but to fear,
to the fate that awaited him with the rising of the sun.
An irreversible sentence that would be carried out with a length of knotted rope.
At dawn he died before a gathered crowd,
his fate sealed with the pounding of a gavel
and the twist of a key in a lock.
For this last night he remained alone with the ghosts of his past.
Left to remember. Left to regret.
To pray. To desperately hope...
Left to wait for the inevitable ending of his life.