the way out of this maze of myself

I've been reading Story by Steven James - an author/poet who works his way through the biblical Story in his own poetic and storytelling way. Here's an excerpt that seems fitting as we proceed through the assorted kings and dynasties of 1 and 2 Kings...

deep in the center of dawn
the echo returns.
floating on the edge of your words
i hear hope circling around my heart
    "soon, soon, the savior will arrive.
     soon, soon, the king will come."
when will you arrive and show me
the way out of this maze
of myself? i'm feeling more and more lost
every moment i'm here.


splintered.

I heard a story about a king whose brother tried unsuccessfully to assassinate him. As punishment, the king imprisoned his brother in a room with a window facing the sea. The room had a normal-sized door that a normal-sized person could walk through. They must have built the room around the guy, though, because the king's brother wasn't normal-sized at all - he was way overweight.

So all he had to do to be free was lose enough weight to fit through the door. But every day the king's servants brought platters of fine food to him. They set the food in the window. That was his sentence - overcome his addiction or die in that cell.

And he died in that cell.

Just as the king knew he would.

And the person in the story I can identify with most is that imprisoned brother, staring at the gulls and the open water, eating another mouthful of rich food and telling himself that tomorrow he'll deal with his problem and walk out the door. Yeah, he'll start tomorrow. Or someday. Whichever comes first.

But neither did.