Mirrors
The king with mirrors in his eye sockets sits upon his throne. Without sight, he uses his tongue to taste the air; each breath paints a picture of cobwebs, old wood, stale winds. His throne sits in the center of a large domed room; piles of books, jewelry, gold, dot the room in lieu of courtesans. Murals on the walls show frescoes of horses and their riders, drowned beneath read waves. His subjects are dead.
He buries his face in his hands; the light catches his eyes in the gaps between his fingers. They glint white; the lightest spot in that drab place.
Three windows show three mountains: one black, one grey, one white. Inside the black curl mine shafts. The grey holds all the unfired missiles built a thousand years ago. The white holds only corpses and its sides are blank with ash. A smokestack on each mountaintop hisses all that smog over the land; the only sound’s the sound of soot that falls upon the ground.
