The Monkey

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A modern fable in verse. Wise Monkey Wrought scroll N.001, "The Monkey." He keeps a ledger. It is not a long book. Centuries of watching, and the page is mostly margin. He saw how hunger dressed itself as creed and spoke as virtue while it took its fill. Each rule we swore we genuinely need was cut to fit the hand that held the bill. He watched us name the grief before it fell, and heard the word stand quiet in its place, as if the naming arranged the matter well and smoothed the very edge it can't erase. He marked the fence we argued into being one early spring, the posts not yet in sight. The line was drawn in everything but seeing. The ground already knew. He watched us fight. For every wound he reached for three. None fit. He set down two, and left the third unsaid. He had sat through this before, all of it, and watched us swap the word and keep the dread. The ledger holds what we keep failing to see. The ledger stays short. Not for want of material.