You who wear the world like wounds,
and grind its bones to be crowns
Call the weight of demands gravitas
and its silence consent

You who spin insult from air-
weaving it as robes of injury,
and sceptres of slight
enthroned in trespass

You who rule yet add nothing to it,
Not even in the absence of yourselves,
Yet hoard our breath, our time,
and take our dreams as taxes.

You who toil desperately to keep,
to unchange, to rot-
To hold that hollow crown

And in the end, when it fades,
When time itself calls upon your name
What will remain but silence
That you mistook for yours?

Penned by my hand on the 12th of Chronos, in the year 967 AF.