Once upon a time, the rain poured down over the already dreary landscape of the King’s land. It was soon to be nothing, to him at least. This life, his possessions, and even the very last glimmer of sun would soon cease to carry any meaning.
“Where have my days gone?” he wondered aloud to the void lurking in the shadows of his mind. With each word, he fought harder to put the letters together. To struggle to breathe after a life filled with empty breaths was an irony lost on the King.
This weather, an abysmal scattering of showers, with the persistence of a scorned lover, left the air feeling ominous. The world outside so befittingly marking the final days of his reign seemed almost too on the nose. Looking out over the barren fields, their workers long gone, we knew all along who the real victor would be. The loser, the King, finally down for the count, had long refused to admit defeat. It had been years of tyranny, and his subjects scattered in fear of his wrath and aware of the imminent doom that rests in his wake.
It was not always this way. His land was once promising and flourishing. The taste of prosperity seemed to rest on everyone’s lips. Somewhere along the way, this taste went sour, a bitter fruit never ripened. Fervently, the King held onto what once was. His subjects, hungry and unable to feed themselves off of ideas, especially those of the past, moved onto new, greater lands.
Finally, the rain had arrived, the parched soil would be replenished, and the beauty of growth would take shape again in a place that had been devoid of life for far too long. This land, that at once felt like his entire being, would live on without him. In fact, it was rejuvenated in spite of him. All of those people who had fled, terrified by his hysteria, could finally return to an oasis.
“Where have my people gone? Why, why have they forsaken me? Was I not the best ruler I could be?”
The King’s words now echoed, possibly only in his mind.
In truth, he had done his best. It was the best that he knew, and in his knowledge was all he held. Yet, sometimes, in holding on so tight, like with water or grains of sand, we lose far more than we were ever able to hold onto.
Now, these drops pouring from the sky were the furthest thing from what he could bring himself to do. In his time ruling over this place, not a single tear was shed. Now, in his final moments, strewn about in his death bed, the universe had finally whispered that sorrow can exist. The rain strangely granted him the grace of a remorseful embrace.
Look now at this man, resting in his own arms, as he rocks himself into his final slumber. His ivory tower, built to protect him from the world below, was now but only a means of drawing him closer to the heavens. Would it be better to be with those that truly loved all of him, those that had no other choice but to flee, or to take the crumbs that fed his ego? Can that kind of hunger be fed retroactively, can one spit it all up?
In every sense, the right to life or death rested well outside of his control. The words he wished to dole out were no longer his, but floating up into the ether. Those urgent concerns, pressing matters weighing down on his chest, leaving as well. Yet, with his eyes closed shut and his soul shrunken deep within the shell that would no longer be his body, he still held onto those moments. It was the memory of bliss that he clung to his whole life. Deep, deep down it was the very light within himself that he ran away from. For deep-down was also the voice that there should be no good, there should be no bliss.
His final breath was snatched away, his body and mind finally still. Life took that breath and spread it as far as the eye could see. It stretched it so thin, so lightly, that no one was aware of this man’s single breath circumnavigating the globe. It touched everything, that bliss of his. As his once body sunk into what used to be his bed, a smile spread across his face, and the clouds parted away. The Sun caressed the land, its vibrant reds and oranges setting the world ablaze. Finally, we could all be free, for the King’s bliss was no longer a secret, but a key to something larger than either you or I. If only he were there to see it.