The March of Shame
I had always imagined death would be distant.
A possibility, yes — but not a certainty. Certainly not like this. Dragged through the streets I once ruled. Faces turned toward me not with fear, but with relief.
The man they once bowed to… now reduced to a cautionary tale. Children stopped playing to point. Old men whispered. Some didn’t look at all. There is something more painful than death — irrelevance.
The Tower I Built
They led me to it.
The gallows I had commissioned.
Tall, proud, perfect.
Each beam carved with precision.
Fifty cubits — a monument to vengeance.
I had ordered it built in fury.
I never thought I’d die on it.
But perhaps I had been building it long before I ever saw the wood.
This Is What Comes of Pride
I thought I could outmaneuver kings. Manipulate queens. Control the fate of nations with words and ink.
And yet…
One Jew.
One act of defiance.
One voice at a banquet —
That was all it took to expose the rot beneath my robes.
Esther was never silent. She was waiting. Mordecai was never weak. He was positioned.
And I?
I was never strong.
Just loud.
Agag’s Ghost
I hear my ancestors now.
Not in pride.
In judgment.
What did I restore?
What did I reclaim?
Agag was struck down by a prophet.
I was undone by a woman.
Perhaps that is justice.
Perhaps it was always meant to end this way.
Our hatred is a seed that cannot grow fruit — only poison.
And I swallowed every drop.
The Final Breath
They are tying the rope now.
The sky is strangely quiet.
No thunder.
No curse.
Just wood creaking under wind.
I want to scream, but what would I say?
“Remember me?”
They won’t.
Not in songs.
Not in stories.
Only in silence…
As the fool who hung on the gallows he built with his own hands.
And that, perhaps, is the truest justice of all.
