Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Stones at the Castle

Every day he’d walk up to the castle
And cast his stones

One, two
Never even saw
If they hit
But it made him feel better

Then he’d go home to his wife
And children
And sulk by the fire
While the baby starved
And the wife cried
And his little son begged him
To do something about all of it

But he didn’t care about any of that
Just the castle
Just the castle and how
He was gonna bring it down
With those little pebbles of his

Then one day
He steps up to the castle
Pebble in hand
Stone ready
And he lobs it
And boom

Down goes the castle

He can’t believe it
He cannot believe his luck

Now, what you and I know
From where we’re standing
Is that he didn’t do a damn thing

It was one of those moments of luck
For him anyway
Where the minute chucked his stone
A sinkhole opened up
And swallowed the castle whole
And everybody inside it
That the man hated

But he didn’t know that

He’d just thought he’d done it
He thought he’d toppled the castle
Just like he always wanted to

And then he stood there
Looking at the place
Where the castle used to be

He stood there for over an hour
People came running
They came to help
They screamed
One ran right past him
And all the while he was waiting
For somebody to charge him
To accuse him of what he’d done
But even then
Even with all that time gone by
He still didn’t believe
That it couldn’t have been him

Because he saw it with his own eyes
And because sinkholes weren’t widely know about
Way back then

The man went home
A few pebbles still left in his pocket
He sat down at his kitchen table
His baby was crying
His wife was laying in bed with a grave illness
His son was outside chopping wood
And he sat there

Outside he heard water running
He left his kitchen
He walked past his son
Holding up an axe
He walked towards the sound
Of the running water

A mile into the woods
He found a small circle of water
He stepped into it
It went up to his ankles
But just about

So he knelt down
And picked up a stone
A little one
The size of a thumb
And put it on his head

A little more of him
Sank down
Into this small circle of water

With the stone still on his head
He knelt down
And picked up two more
And placed them
On his shoulders

Down he went
A little more

He picked up more stones
And put them wherever
They would go

A few even went
Into his mouth
And one slipped down his throat
Into his belly

Finally, as the last stone
Was placed atop his head
All of him sank down
Down into the cool
That felt like fire

Down to the place
Where the castles are

The castles
Toppled

By stone

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