Herculean Thoughts

VI.

The loss of a crown is the loss of a king.

I cannot actually point out at what point I lost my crown. It was just one day, and I noticed my head felt lighter than what I was used to. At first, it felt great, like how my long sorrows of seasonal rhinitis ended with spring. Nobody noticed. No one gave a glance at my head. As a king, everyone before me looked down, and so no one has actually seen my crown.

However, as I did my royal routine of fumbling through words, it did not feel familiar. My hands remembered the pages. My eyes know where to look. Yet my mind was at a loss. It did not know what it was looking at. It made a funny look on its face, if it had one. It was in complete and utter confusion. So then, my eyes gave it a second chance of going through the tattooed paper, but now, slower. My mind took its time. It did try. It squinted its pair of eyes, if it had any, and used its past to recover what was familiar. However, although it understood the lines, the feeling of deep attachment was nowhere to be found. It felt as though one person felt out of love. I felt, in a certain way, out of wisdom.

For centuries, the crowned king was wise. He constructed cities and laws, preventing every commoner from being strays. He trusts himself and knows what, when, and where to look. That feeling he was accustomed to was his strength. Without the crown, it was only a skill waiting to be showcased and seen. The crown had power, and bearing it made the king the hero of his kingdom.

Now he has lost it. The king's heart was dumped with stagnant green water kept for millennia in an abandoned well. He feels suffocated. He forgot how to breathe. At this point, he just lost something that kept his life feeling like home.

It feels ill. I feel ill. I want my crown back.