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Writer's pictureLily Shen

One Thousand Shades of Red: A Muse on King Arthur

Updated: Mar 13, 2023

There’s been a resurgence in nostalgia for BBC’s Merlin lately—it seemed fitting to recall the time I was ten and sat cross-legged in front of the TV for hours on end, starry-eyed for what essentially was my entire known idea of love at the time: King Arthur, and his queen Guinevere. There’s something inexplicably beautiful about a love story as tragic as this one, and I don’t think it’s one I’ll ever be able to take out of my heart. So, here’s a fairytale about the knight in shining armor and the queen of the castle.


One.

Fallen kingdom of molten bronze


Two.

On a bridge of wings and stars


Three.

Dandelions of the hilltop; cold solitude

afar from the river


Four.

Silhouettes of light on Thanatos’ shrine


Five.

Tales transcending fate and time


Six.

Times broken


Seven.

Times mended


Eight

Legends never die, stardust in

your blood and mine


Nine.

Tailor-made gowns of rose silk


Ten.

Years on ice-cold sheets and white hot glass


One hundred.

Vows under fields of anastasia

—the rain resurrects, but

it will not heal


One thousand.

Shades of red on

her wedding dress


One hundred thousand.

Knights in shining armor; baptism in war


sun specks in his hair

blue butterfly in her hand


not all that glitters is gold

but when blood runs like water rust is age old

once and future,

time is fragile and love is forever


One thousand.

Universes in

one million

lifetimes


One hundred.

Drops of tears for every

ten


drops of hell

on his soil and on

his name


Nine.

is meaningless; asleep

—as the mountains of late spring


Eight.

Rewind.


Seven.

Kisses on the sun, lonely and pure and slippery

in the running stream


Six.

Heeded the call from the valley of

once and never


Five.

She is a flower


Four.

She is of the golden sigil,

he is of her heart


Three.

For what is and what never should be


Two.

Stars


One

soul.



Cover Photo Source: The Eclectic Light Company

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