in this desert you are king Pt III

and i am the siege outside the city walls. I hurl rocks and throw burning embers, and the guardians respond with arrows and scalding water. we camped for fourteen days before we began the siege proper, starving the city out, but supplies are rich in this citadel, and we in fact have begun to wear the countryside thin.

The city has held for forty days, and i know it can hold for eighty more. when i break its gates down there will be no mercy, and i will burn every holy thing in it to the ground, and i will stay no hand of any man slaughtering any inhabitant. i will do that because i know you are not there, you are not here, you are not anywhere. when i walk through the ravaged streets they will be full of bodies and empty of you, but with your hints inside every door and behind every corner, the smell of your incense and the tinkle of the bells of the dancers, the swish of rich cloth on rich cloth, the taste of thick fruit soaked in heavy sugar syrup. these will haunt me in the fallen city where you have long left and where the remnants of my forces run mad.

and though i know you are not in there i blast away at it still. pride or bitterness should drive me in this endeavour; the man on one side of me tells me i should own it and be its king: the one on the other tells me to raze it to the ground in spite. burn it, or own it. but i suspect i want neither.

i know though they do not that you have long gone (do i? no, but i can feel it). i can see you and your delicious entourage, with music and cushions and minted tea at the ready, ambling across the sand to one of the havens you have always kept ready for my arrival. i can see you reclined under the light blue canopy as the camels and horses walk onward, minstrels and entertainers never stopping their array of novelties for you, the whole courtly caravan flanked by your army of personal cavalry, while you write and receive letters and decrees just as if you were in your study which i now pound with rocks.

i know you are not in there, and i pound it still. i want to break down those walls and tear into those streets though you are not there to see me do it and hear the cries of anguish, because when i am done and depleted, standing there amongst the ruins, imagining myself ruler over a rubble of stones, i will hear the music of your court songstrel and the clink of your signet ring on your chalice as you pick it up, and your army will rise like a sandstorm from their waiting place two hills away to enter the city and scatter my forces. you will return like the king you are, and my expended band of rebels will fall and split before you as the bunches of scented dried reeds i found in your empty bedchamber did under my hand.

i will pound this city into submission, and having destroyed it and myself, i will look over and see you come to take it back effortlessly. and yet i will do it, because it is the only way i will ever stand before you again. you will come to me, on the steps in front of the holy place, there will be arrows in crossbows pointed at my neck, and a full guard behind you, and you will remove your glove, raise my chin to look into your sundrenched eyes and say, "my dear daughter, why do you this?" i will not answer, only show you my bloody hands caked with dirt. the tattoo on my wrists says destroy us all, but we have returned for our destiny.