this least quintessence

We walk these halls where once walked our fathers. We haunt these rooms where our fathers' ghosts still loom. This bent inheritance hung with medals and hope. This inevitable scent of something rotten spilling through the walls. We strive to answer our honor against their failing kingdoms. We long to be the way we thought they were. The alarm rings out in the dead of night, an apparition dread and sorrowful looms in the fire's glow.

You wake from dreams where your father does not know you. You wake held tight in some ancient aspect of your blood. Tears burn hot as in your own skin you are a stranger. Outside there is something waiting for your questions. Outside the stars will give you all you're owed.

They sit in silence, the worn walls and split towers. They sit in silence, these sullen monuments to lost wars. We scuff the floors as we pace and pace. Always this abandoned hour where our fathers are breathed into candle wax. Gone forever though their voices ring out. Dead so long though their judgement still clings. From the bird in the sky to the ghost in the corner, this least quintessence, this shattered crown.