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