The Broken Ladder
He climbs with one hand, clutching rust, the other counts what never comes— not cherries now, but rungs that snap like hollow bones. Below, the drum of slot machines still grinds its hymn: one more pull, one more limb.
Where your king leaned on his throne of pits, this one kneels in splintered wood, his rosy eyes gone gray as ash, his bloody teeth ground down to dust. Each time he reaches for the next high branch, the ladder sheds a ghost— a mother’s voice, a debt’s white host.
You bled the fruit. He eats the smoke. The feast you burned still curls and chokes his leaking heart, which never learned to close the door, only to turn and build what cannot hold its weight: a ladder aimed at a missing gate.
And still he climbs. What else is there? Below, the pits. Above, thin air.