I heard the beckoning call
and rose from my indolent slumber.
Eyes that had long been medicated,
perceived in some new dimension.
I made to move
and was surprised at how I rose so quickly.
As I stood,
I could feel a weight come off me.
Pieces of my old skeleton
falling free.
I looked around
and realized,
I must be somewhere new.
I must be someone new.
Then I heard a sound
and looked down
and I could see
thousands of my victims
scrambling across the floor,
taking the dead pieces of my armor
and fashioning them into weapons.
Gleefully they surged towards me
and soon
I could feel the slicing pain
of a thousand tiny knives
taking me down.
Down.
Down.
So weak and vulnerable.
They came to kill their teacher.
They came to kill the bully.
They came,
singing a song of slaughter
and left with all the soft parts of me.
Awake before the Sun.
I rise again
and nothing falls.
Have I kept my armor?
Am I not a new thing,
in a new place?
I shake my head
and walk into the shower.
I dress
and drink my coffee
and drive to work.
I fashion weapons
from the discarded bones
of an ancient Earth,
and wonder,
if it, too
will wake.
HG – 2019
