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I bite my tongue and swallow the answers.
For once, it’s not my court.
So I play the groundling,
nodding, smiling and cheering from afar.

When it ends and it does,
I wash the glue off my lips 
scrub the blood off my wounds.
It’s time to return to the ivory tower
where my court awaits its absent queen.

 

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First published in Internet Void Journal in Jan 2019.

https://internetvoid.com/2019/01/17/the-groundling/