Photo by Maria Lin Kim on Unsplash
you asked for a paper crown with your whopper, although you were turning thirty, & the teen cashier handed it over without mutiny. we took turns as boy kings. onion & sweat perfumed our procession. we dropped fries into our mouths like luscious grapes, made thrones of abandoned benches, & sent imagined enemies to their deaths. you placed the flimsy circlet on my brow, & my voice dropped an octave. the crown, cartoon gold, came unclasped, crooked & sweat-wrinkled. when we polished off the bottle of stolen champagne, bubbles frothed our grease-gilded lips. this is how you left me, royal with delirium, the crown discarded under a pile of damp laundry. months later, after you had died, i donned the crown again, discovered half-crushed behind the bookcase, cardboard soggy & peeling, crests bent forward like weary gardeners. like this, how you left me, how you left this world, a boy king becoming suddenly older when he watched the first traitor’s head roll across the floor.
Evelyn Berry is the trans, southern author of the forthcoming poetry collection GRIEF SLUT (Sundress Publications, 2024). A 2023 NEA Creative Writing Fellow, she lives in South Carolina, where she works as a museum educator.