Forum Post: Words by Steven Dunn

It's like this, the king marries a commoner, and the populace cheers. She doesn't even know how to curtsy, but he loves her manners in bed. Why doesn't the king do what his father did, those peasant girls brought in through that secret entrance, that's ho a kingdom works best. But marriage! The king's mother won't come out of her room, and a strange democracy radiates throughout the land, which causes widespread dreaming, a general hopefulness. This is of coarse, how people get hurt, how history gets it's ziggy shape. The king locks his wife in the tower because she's begun to ride into the woods. How unqueenly to come back to the castle like that, so sweaty and flushed. The only answer, his mother decides, is stricter rules----- no whispering in the corridors, no gaiety in the fields. The king announces his wife is very tired and has decided to lie down, and issues an edict that all things yours are once again his. This is the kind of law history loves, which  contains it's own demise. The villagers conspire for years, waiting for the right time, which never arrives. There's only that one person, not exactly brave, but too unhappy to be reasonable, who crosses the moat, scales the walls.

                                         Stephen Dunn