074/365 11/03/2025

You can want to be king all you want. But kings are born, son. They aren’t made. Pa and me were working on the Harvester, the smell of oil and grease and hay all around us. The afternoon was clear and bright and not too hot, and Pa had the hoses he’d already taken out on the right and the hoses he was going to put in on the left. All laid out on a blanket on the ground in the order they were supposed to go in: left to right on the ground, front to back on the Harvester. But imagine if you didn’t want to be king but had to anyway? He turned his blue eyes on me. They could be hard but now they were kind and danced with a certain mischief. You don’t get to choose. One day someone dies and suddenly you’re king with all the shit that entails. And there’s nothing you can do about it.