My entry for Flash! Friday vol. 2-28. This week’s prompt was “arrogance.” The visual prompt was this political cartoon of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria:
A crown on the head is a weighty thing indeed. Disraeli—I loved his name; the syllables sang on my tongue when I spoke them. I did not attend his funeral. That is the weight of jeweled protocol. As the empress of all, I cannot deign to attend a lesser person’s funeral. And all are lesser people.
I did not think I would be so lonely and never be alone. I did not calculate the separation between subject and the Royal Me. You must not turn your back on me, literally or figuratively, when taking my leave. You bow and negotiate your careful backward steps.
Are you not my pets? Well behaved here in the castle but in the city, you make me think of rats. Think on it. No human interaction is genuine.
You are as distant from me as those fading, dancing horses in the caves of Lascaux.
