THE TALE OF PAW!
THE MONKEY KING
CHAPTER I
Loneliness is a castle
Made of muddy chambers
With turrets
That trap you
In the clouds
And currents of longing
That churn in its moat
As you reach for days
That slipped away
As soon as they began.
In this castle
paw! Is king.
But a visitor has
Scaled the walls
That stretch high into the night.
He has outsmarted the labyrinth
Built to entomb intruders
And dodged the arrows
Aimed at anyone
Who might dismantle
This kingdom
Just to find paw!
Alone in a dark corner
Wearing a crown
No one else can see.
CHAPTER II
paw! looks up.
He hasn’t encountered another creature in months. How is it possible that anyone could find him here so deep in the forest?
“Are you okay?” the creature asks. As it comes closer, paw! squints. It can’t be, but it is: A monkeyrabbit just like paw!.
It has been so long since paw! has seen one of his own. But now he remembers what it was like in when he still lived within the Kingdom of the Monkeyrabbits, before he was exiled and never allowed back in. That awful day is still so clear in his mind, all the monkeyrabbits lining up on the windswept beach for the annual Day of Shunning, the king stepping down from his bananathrone and walking directly to paw!.
“You,” the king had said, and paw! looked up. It was paw!’s time to leave the kingdom and never return.
“But why?” paw! asked.
“In a strong kingdom, no one is lonely,” the king said. “But you, paw!—you don’t have a single friend.”
This was true. All his life paw! had been clueless, failing to understand the jokes and games the other monkeyrabbits played. Even paw!’s own parents had named him paw! because they said he had a foot for a brain. Their insults were the closest paw! had ever come to love.
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paw! stood before the king, trying to look mighty and unwavering.
“You can’t exile me,” paw! said. “One day I will be king. When I have power, everyone will love me. And I won’t be lonely anymore.”
The king laughed at this, and the other monkey rabbits did, too. The sound of their laughter was the last thing paw! heard as the kingdom gates closed behind him.
paw! had not encountered a monkeyrabbit ever since.
Now, finally, here is one, a creature just like paw!, someone who might be just as lonely as he is. But something is different about this monkeyrabbit. He has floppy ears and a mouth that never closes. And inside his mouth is something that looks like a face. paw! has never seen anything like it.
The monkeyabbit takes a step closer to paw!. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I’m lonely,” paw! says.
“I’m lonely, too,” The monkeyrabbit replies.
paw! shuffles closer to the new monkeyrabbit. His heart throws itself against his chest as he searches for the words he had longed to say all his life.
“Will you be my friend?” paw! asks.
The monkeyrabbit takes paw!’s hand. His paw. For the first time in his life, paw!’s name doesn’t feel like a joke.
There is a nagging feeling in paw!’s small brain that perhaps this isn’t a monkeyrabbit at all. Maybe it is just a lowly noop playing a trick on him, someone who wants to make paw! feel like the fool he has been all his life. But for a day, paw! buries this thought in his mind.
He feels like he can ride the clouds. Like he can conquer the night.
Finally, he has a friend.
CHAPTER III
