sorry no i’m not done i’m gonna make you all cry some more i’m bringing you down with me
there was once a little boy.
he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.
somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.
the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?
he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.
as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.
he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.
and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.
there was once a little boy.
