To myself. A non kings lament

Of mountains and of towers! Of heights yet unseen,
I ascend with the might of mine own self,
and the world shall mark the day it first heard me speak.
This day is mine. I claim it as none have dared to before.
My stride lengthens daylight. My presence bends time.
My voice, a banner against silence, carries through eager ears,
etched into the marrow of history.

Yet the alley is dim again, my shadow smaller than I recall.
I pull my coat tight, hands shaking, keys colder than they used to be.
The door opens to silence—no fanfare, no glory.
Just the hum of a fridge that never keeps food warm enough.
The tinfoil peels back, sour and cold.
I chew, I swallow, I exist.

She sat in that seat we discovered once,
white cushioned fabric wrapped around its frame like a promise.
I could never look at her too long—
afraid my gaze might break her,
afraid my words might break me.
So I sat in silence,
my love bound tight in my throat,
a secret buried beneath years that slipped through my fingers like dust.
Now, I only speak to her in silence.
She never answers.

My words come up like bile upon the gravestone of past selves.
A forgotten king, a god without worshippers.
The echo of a voice that once roared now reduced to whispers,
lost in the wind of time’s neglect.
I dampen myself in darkness, washing away the weight of a day,
of a life, of a thousand chances left to rot.
The mirror does not look back.
It does not remember me.

I lay my head upon the grass, beneath a sky that still watches.
It does not speak, does not judge.
The stars remain where they have always been,
burning, waiting, distant.
They know my name, even if the world has forgotten it.
I close my eyes, and in the silence of my own making,
I dream of every life I never lived.