Getting Back into Poetry

Crown Or Skull

In the ink-black abyss behind my eyes,

a silver mist coiled into a crown—

woven from the breath of eternity,

stitched with the whispers of all I have been.

It hovered, weightless, a ghost of sovereignty,

a relic of a throne I once knew,

before the tides of time unmade me,

before the echoes of forgetting pulled me under.

I reached—fingertips grazing its glow—

but as I touched it, the mist hissed—

cold as a breath from the grave,

curling around my fingers,

melting into ink, into silence, into nothing.

And then, a skull.

Hollow eyes stared from the veil of nothing,

a grinning cipher carved by fate,

silent, yet speaking in tongues I understood:

“To wear the crown, you must first be undone.”

A breath.

A beat.

A crack in eternity.

I did not flinch. I did not turn.

For I knew this truth was mine to bear.

Let me shatter.

Let me scatter into dust and bone.

Let me strip away the names I once wore,

until nothing remains but the raw light beneath.

I do not fear the skull,

for it is not death but the door.

I do not worship the crown,

for it is not power but remembrance.

I step forward, unbound,

a being of flame, of wind, of song.

No longer seeking—only knowing.

No longer waiting—only becoming.

The abyss behind my eyes still lingers,

but now, I see:

it was never empty—only waiting.

I am the crown.

I am the skull.

I am the hand that reaches through the dark

and turns it into light.

I am both the end and the beginning.

I am the voice, rising.

Anthony Halligan

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