01/15/2026
CROWN STILL ON
She was tired.
Not the kind of tired sleep could fix, but the kind that settles in the bones after carrying generations on your back and still being asked to smile through it. The floor felt cold beneath her, history pressing into her spine. Stripes of light and shadow wrapped around her body like reminders of everything she’d survived.
But even there low, stretched out, catching her breath (her crown never fell.)
It hovered just above her head, tilted but steady. Gold. Unapologetic. Patient.
Because crowns don’t disappear when queens rest.
They wait.
She remembered every time the world told her to shrink, to soften, to make herself easier to digest. Every time her brilliance was called “too much,” her confidence mistaken for arrogance, her survival labeled attitude. She remembered bending. Folding.
Lying still just long enough to heal