Even Kings Must Grieve

I closed my eyes and dreamt
of everything that was once mine.

The layered pillars
that comforted me.

I wandered the vineyard of my mind,
a garden bearing every apple imaginable.

Green apples.
Red apples.
Purple apples.
Golden apples.

And I am allergic to every one.

The rose beds,
deep as sky without a single star,
their velvet blooms invite
the hollow places in me to soften.

They tell of my travesties with permission.

That is what roses are for.

But even they expire.

In my library, books
stacked to the ceiling—

books that carried me
as far as time could travel
and always returned me wiser.

But I pulled one,

and fate cried,

“JENGA.”

The whole cathedral I worshiped

collapsed at my feet.

And with it,
everything I feared to
come tumbling down.

This wisdom passes through the wind, telling the same old truth.

It bends the trees we plant
and descends into the roots
that grip the earth with its knuckles.

This truth will pass through every pilgrim,

while the garden remains behind.

I do not want to die
knowing the bare minimum,

or worse—

to have lived in vain—A wretched Macbeth,

king of everything except himself.

I crave the conviction
to be set apart

from the idols my flesh once suckled on.

As wisdom grows,

my garden of folly withers.

That is how grief works, it takes— to give.

There is a time to be born.

To be held
within my mother’s arms.

A time to leave them.

To curse them.

To forgive them.

To discover
the lonely country

where faith begins to grow.

Yet

everything has been made beautiful

in its time.

Even kings

must grieve.