One Thousand Shades of Red: A Muse on King Arthur

There’s been a resurgence in nostalgia for BBC’s Merlin lately—it seemed fitting to recall the time I was ten and sat cross-legged in front of the TV for hours on end, starry-eyed for what essentially was my entire known idea of love at the time: King Arthur, and his queen Guinevere. There’s something inexplicably beautiful about a love story as tragic as this one, and I don’t think it’s one I’ll ever be able to take out of my heart. So, here’s a fairytale about the knight in shining armor and the queen of the castle.

One.

Fallen kingdom of molten bronze

Two.

On a bridge of wings and stars

Three.

Dandelions of the hilltop; cold solitude

afar from the river

Four.

Silhouettes of light on Thanatos’ shrine

Five.

Tales transcending fate and time

Six.

Times broken

Seven.

Times mended

Eight

Legends never die, stardust in

your blood and mine

Nine.

Tailor-made gowns of rose silk

Ten.

Years on ice-cold sheets and white hot glass

One hundred.

Vows under fields of anastasia

—the rain resurrects, but

it will not heal

One thousand.

Shades of red on

her wedding dress

One hundred thousand.

Knights in shining armor; baptism in war

sun specks in his hair

blue butterfly in her hand

not all that glitters is gold

but when blood runs like water rust is age old

once and future,

time is fragile and love is forever

One thousand.

Universes in

one million

lifetimes

One hundred.

Drops of tears for every

ten

drops of hell

on his soil and on

his name

Nine.

is meaningless; asleep

—as the mountains of late spring

Eight.

Rewind.

Seven.

Kisses on the sun, lonely and pure and slippery

in the running stream

Six.

Heeded the call from the valley of

once and never

Five.

She is a flower

Four.

She is of the golden sigil,

he is of her heart

Three.

For what is and what never should be

Two.

Stars

One

soul.

Cover Photo Source: The Eclectic Light Company