namesake

The world was full of wanderers, the world was full of wars. They killed their kings, they killed their conscience. The streets shook with screams and tears. The cities broke and burned. Amid this chaos, some human resolution. Among these crises, the usual human work. From the striving and the fleeting feelings, from the nature of the beast, you were birthed. All the tears and frustrations yet to follow. Every failure yet to unfold.

The names entangled the buried blood lines, the seeds sown of sunder, those reaped of unseemly war. You wore the mark upon your mien, no name used ever truly yours. Born and cherished amid all the usual hopes, you spent years unravelling wrong and broken. You bruised each heart that held themselves open, you beat the hinges off of every door opened for you through labor and grace.  You earned contempt and mastered its wielding. You seldom even bothered not to fail.

Time burned on like all those bridges. The years fell away like leaf and limb. The grave swallowed each namesake, every hope carried for you left beaten and bleeding out. Sometimes you were a monster, sometimes you only wrecked them, beating down terror and hero as you would all faith and love. Now enfeebled by spells and sickness, your heart choked with worm and maggot, death upon you every day. You weep for dreams and fiction, you cry for each mistook road. Your enemies peering in your windows, debtors gathered by your door. You swallow another bitter dose, ache and bleed away each aimless day. Your life all roil and rumor, you at long last measured up to the nothing of your name.