The Maimed King Susie Gharib I am ceremoniously sitting next to him in a boat that looks like a lily’s wing, both contemplating the irritated lake, whose bosom envelops his dangling bait, the moon all blown into a trillion flakes. “I do not like to kill any living thing. We believe in the fishes’ sacredness,” I audibly mumble to my agitated self. His response comes rippling on the wailing wind, his first heard utterance in a thousand years: “I only fish what is already dead, what lies deep hidden on a sacred bed, in the bottom of this benighted lake.” I wait. He averts his face and solemnly prays. I think of T. S. Eliot, of Idylls of the King, but fail to comprehend his allegorical intent. He cannot be speaking of a sword’s demise, that had been burnished at Merlin’s command and the Lady of the Lake has eternal life. The wound in his thigh is gaping wide. The blood has trickled into my mind. I wake up to a clot within my mouth.
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