I believed myself limitless,
A god, if you will,
Unbound by nature and my own mortality,
Or so I thought,
My hands clasped together,
In applause or another's grasp,
Unknowing of my and others' fates,
And such is the folly of youth.
I once drank fine wine,
And bit into apples like those of Eden.
My "friends" were the same,
And I thought of us as loyal fellows,
In war and peace.
It was not to be.
On the fringes of revolution,
Hanging onto it's fragile coattails,
There was a new danger,
The hatred of me and anyone like me,
Those blessed by birth and standing.
I learned quickly of my own ability to fall,
Off a pedestal of my own design and otherwise,
And those I considered friends fled,
And my so-called comrades betrayed.
It was a swift execution,
The beheading swift and true,
They hung a man after me,
Some said it took an hour for him to die.
Now we wander these once-princely ruins,
Afraid of what lies beyond the mortal plane,
Yet craving it,
Some have gone insane,
Others sit in corners and fade into nothingness.
I am neither.
I tell my story to the winds,
To the crashing sea beyond these crumbling walls,
To the birds and the sky.
Sometimes, on the lonely days,
When the sun is buried beneath fat clouds,
And the cool West wind flows over my insubstantial skin,
I can see the barest glimpse of what was once here.
It lasts a mere instant,
Then a seagull will shriek,
And both I and the ruins will fade.