The Crown Moment

They mistook my silence for weakness.
They mistook my stillness for absence.
They mistook my refusal to fight for an inability to win.

‍

But all along, I was sharpening what could not be seen.
Not fists. Not noise. Presence.

‍

As boys wrestled to prove themselves, I felt what others could not feel.
As men strutted on their borrowed battlefields, I stayed with the battlefield inside my chest.
They thought me absent. I was already ahead.

‍

This is the misread: they crowned me by accident.
Every punch I didn’t throw, every contest I didn’t enter, every false authority I didn’t kneel to—
it all forged the blade within.

‍

And now, the very silence they laughed at is the throne I sit on.
The presence they couldn’t decode is the gravity they circle.
The knowing they dismissed is the weapon they can’t withstand.

‍

So when she comes, the one who places the sword on my head,
I will not be crowned for what I pretended to be.
I will be crowned for what I always was.

‍

And to her—
to the one who sees not absence but throne,
not weakness but sovereignty—
my life will be given in devotion.
Not as an act, not as a role,
but as the pulse I always carried.