I once won a Ruby, in the lottery of life,
and it shone and its light blinded me,
and it cast me a spell, and it saved me from hell,
or was it hell in disguise 'cause its colour was red.
And it changed in its shape from a gem to a card,
and as strange as a card can be,
it had two sides, on both sides were queens,
but one was the Queen of Hearts,
and the other the Queen of Clubs,
and I fell into step, as a marching cadet
with the one that I thought was for me.
The Queen of Clubs grew jealous,
and she tore my world apart, I pleaded,
but she laughed.
Then Queen of Hearts had pity on the one,
who knelt before her in the dust,
and she condemned me to exile,
on a small lonely isle,
with a Torch and a Rose and a Mirror.
And she told me before I left, why each was
a gift to be held in the highest esteem.
The Torch so she said,
would light up my cold lonely nights,
and pretend that it was my fire.
and with it I could one day find my way,
back to my cosy place beside her.
Thus it stood for Comfort and Hope.
The Rose was a token of past times,
that she'd forgotten but I still remembered,
She told me a fool had once given her the Rose,
she'd forgotten who it was, as it had almost wilted,
Thus the cruel rose stood for Remembrance and Hurt.
And then she spoke of the Mirror,
and said that she gave me a friend,
that here was the only person who would be loyal,
would never leave me, or never put himself first.
But she warned me that he was a false friend,
for he would lie to me, maybe hate me, and let me do wrong,
but he would always be by my side.
he was friend and enemy in one.
Thus the Mirror stood for Myself.
so he was my world, on a small lonely isle in the sea.
and I got to know him well, in those days,
while I held out my torch to search,
for a ship that might pass by my world.
I sometimes saw the Queen's reflection in the mirror,
but it was sometimes hidden by time.
and I sometimes saw my face in the mirror,
but not often.
Always my friend returned to the mirror, until by and by,
I stopped seeing the queen in the mirror,
and I forgot her face, but when I saw the Rose I remembered,
not her face but all her faces.
and I never grew older on that island,
but I grew wiser and bolder.
And I would spend my days with my mirror,
and my nights with the torch,
and even without touching it,
the thorns of the rose pricked my skin.
Then one day, a Blue Bird came and sat on the sand beside me.
It didn't say much, but I saw my reflection in its eyes,
and I saw that it had no red feathers.
that is when I took a stone and broke the mirror.
that is when the light of the torch became fire.
and the Blue Bird picked up the Rose in its mouth,
and beckoned me to fly of the island with it,
and I did.
we flew for many miles, and I saw in my travels,
thousands of islands, with thousands of exiles such as I,
but some didn't have a mirror for a friend,
and some didn't have a torch for light,
but all had a rose and its thorns.
And then we flew over the palace of the Two Queens.
and I fearlessly went inside.
the Blue Bird waited patiently outside,
I took the rose inside the palace,
and I noticed for the first time that it had wilted,
and the Blue Bird had taken off all the thorns.
I went up to the queen who had torn my world apart,
and I kissed her on the cheek, for I had won,
and I went to the queen who had exiled me,
and I gave her the wilted rose, and I said
that a fool had once given it to me,
but I had forgotten who it was,
and as she took the rose it sprang to life again,
with huge thorns and blood red colour,
the thorns pricked the queen and she bled,
and she left her palace to go to the lonely isle in the sea.
But when she'd given away the mirror and the torch,
she hadn't realised what she was giving away,
and who she was sending away.
Now she did, and the sea turned red.
And once more I took to the skies with the Blue Bird,
and as I did so, I saw that I too had become a bird,
as blue as the sky above,
But with a little red feather, close to my heart.
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Submission Name: The Exile
