Empire

He wore a little spiraled hat and wrote a song that everyone sang. He lived on the mountainside above a lake with a mythical beast he’d subdued. A train circled the village each hour, over and over, as he leaned down over the clock of   his world where people were days becoming months and years. In a park, from the hides of  ten cows, he’d constructed a  giant ball that everyone touched until it became a torn rag. He had no family, and because he worried so much about them:What if, what if, what if, like another beast pawing away, he’d invented a vitamin for everyone old that allowed you to continue slowly to grow until you forgot everything you once knew.