Fit for a King

A solitary pirate sails down the dusted cunt of my back, the only remnant of the life that used to surge here.

The leather soles of my sandals drag their smooth tongues across the sandpaper of the scorched earth that carpets the road to his castle.

Barren with bones and seashells, earthen fireworks crunch and crack around my pulsing head, echoes of brawls and banter, glassed and shattered, wooden ships dashed and dancing in closer waters than a flickering lighthouse could warn about.

A solitary pirate sails down the dusted cunt of my back, the only remnant of the life that used to surge here.

I’ve come without invitation and by decree.

Susurrations of a desperate and dying sage, spittle and spells flung into my princely ears.

Her blood, brown and fragrant, dragged with rough fingers across my lips, and dipped, dripping and flicked across the expanse of my bound and writhing body:

The king cannot refuse his calling!

The dead kicked, gurgling and split into the dark snatch of the rushing river, I am naked and erect under the prurient gaze of the Full Moon, one hand full of hair and swinging scalp, the other, crumpled and bloodied parchment.

Meaning must be wrung from what’s left of this spirited trunk, raised to broken and begging lips, where a curling and tumescent sapling, all thrust, pulse and promise will decipher directions to the disinherited king.

I spit nose on the wet grass licking desperately at my bare feet, dress the back of my right hand with what’s left of the witch and wrangle the sandals from the knobbly feet of the beheaded sentinel.

The prophecy, shrill and serious, clangs against the back of my eyes:

The king cannot refuse his calling!

I am the thirst of this land rabid, teeming and ravaged with abandoned men.

I am the return of the life that used to surge here.