A Sword

I wake to the sensation of being lifted into the air. I had been slumbering, immersed in the deep, endless darkness that consumes my fitful dreams. It is always dark these days, even when I am awake. They haven’t released me from my choking cage of wood for a long, long time. I feel the warmth of fingers curling around my handle, and wait in tense anticipation for the moment light floods through my metal body. But it never comes. I am set down again, clanking against the wood that drowns the last cinders of hope.

I am a sword.

I was a sword. Short, with keen and deadly edges, dancing through the air in the skillful, callused hand of a warrior. I remember the familiar grip on my worn, leather-bound handle, and the metallic ring of flowing steel as I am declared to the world. I remember the exhilaration as I descend upon my enemies, cleaving through iron and flesh. Such power, such joy was mine, for what is the purpose of a sword but to serve, to fight? It is my destiny.

No more. As the ages passed, I was traded from hand to hand, and today, I am no longer a sword. I am a decoration, a useless old piece of metal, locked away in this tight scabbard. I sit on a shelf, rotting slowly away. I cry to be unsheathed, to shine forth from darkness and fight until the day my old blade snaps. But the humans who own me now are deaf. They tell me that those times are over, those ages when barbaric men fought and slaughtered each other in cold blood. Peace and civilization is the way now. I lie sightless in agony as I listen to the foolish humans talk such nonsense. I am not stupid. In the long years I writhed in stillness upon my shelf, I have heard of the gun, the tank, and the bomb. They do not need me anymore, these humans. They have created for themselves deadlier tools, yet devoid of my honed, artful perfection. I am useless to my masters now, but what is the purpose of a sword but to fight? What can I do now, reaped of my birthright?

Sometimes, a human slides me from my imprisonment. I am turned, scrutinized, and admired by those who, for a fleeting second, wistfully think of bygone days. But I am never used. And I know I never will be. As time slips through the measureless period of my captivity, I begin to feel the rust growing inside me, eating away my proud sheen, my strength, my being, until nothing shall be left. But until that day, I will continue to dream of dancing through the air.