May 16, 2004
What Will You Do With Me?
What will you do with me?
Will I sit chained to an oar aboard your yacht? You lying on the deck, the sun shading your skin a pale gold as three hundred men toil in dank shadows only a few feet below. An engine would be more efficient, or even a sail, but such pleasure to know that your comfort is bought with the agony of slaves.
Will I stumble forward in the dirt, a bit in my mouth as I pull a plow on some distant corner of your estate? We were lovers in a distant past that seems more dream now than reality. Do you still remember me? My mind comes back to it over and over again as I toil. Your overseer ends my reverie with the crack of a whip against my sunburned back.
Will I kneel in utter darkness? You do not waste a cell on me. My prison is a metal box… Barely wide enough for my shoulders and so low that when your guards closed the lid it pushed by head down to the floor. There is no time here, just the silence of a living grave.
Will I kneel at the right hand of your throne? My wrists and ankles tightly chained, muscles pulled taut. My head pulled far back to stare upward at the gilded ceilings of your palace. You tap your cigar against my lower lip and drop ashes into my waiting mouth.
Which of these will it be? Or will it be any of a thousand other possibilities, each more wonderful and terrible than the last? What will you do with me?