He sits still—center of the storm,
a throne not of gold, but of pages turned,
of lessons burned into marrow,
of stories inked in midnight and marrow-deep hues.
Royal blue drapes his shoulders, heavy as history,
deep red pools beneath him—
not spilled, but poured, ancestral offerings
of wisdom and war, of love and loss.
The crown ain't just metal,
it's the weight of knowing—
of walking through fire and coming out forged,
of bending but never breaking,
of holding the world in calloused hands
and still finding grace in the grip.
Each book stacked beneath him a stone in his temple,
each word a brick laid by those who came before—
the griots, the rebels, the poets, the kings
who never needed a throne to prove their rule.
Gold glints in the flicker of candlelight,
his gaze distant but present—
seeing forward, seeing back,
seeing himself in the echoes.
They call him a king, but he just calls it survival.
They call it a crown, but he knows it’s a torch.
And so he sits—black ink on bound pages,
writing his own name into legend.