THE BURIAL OF BRILLIANCE: Each week, Another Bright Antelope is Buried, Dreams Folded, Potential Sealed Beneath the Soil
By Abioye Tosin Lawrence
In the Hollow Empire, the sun still rises, but not for everyone. Here, ambition is treated like a dangerous weed, it is uprooted, trampled, and buried while the entire kingdom watches. The undertakers wear fine robes, the mourners clap, and the ceremony is called “progress.”
At the Court of Terra Firma, the Devil’s Clerk presides with a crooked smile. He does not reward the swift, nor the wise, nor the diligent. Instead, he crowns the loudest parrots and the fattest goats, creatures who can bleat all day without producing a single drop of milk. The foxes run the granaries, the donkeys write the laws, and the owls, those with real vision, are exiled to the forest edge.
The young calves of the Empire grow up believing they will one day roam the golden fields. They train, they study the language of opportunity, they sharpen their hooves for the race ahead. But when the day comes, the track is dug with holes, and the referees sell the trophies to the slowest ox for a bag of corn.
The bottlenecks are everywhere. At the Bridge of Merit, trolls collect bribes before lowering the gate. The Road of Prosperity is blocked by fat vultures feeding on the carcass of infrastructure. In the Marketplace of Voices, truth is sold cheap, but noise is traded like gold.
And still, the burial ceremonies continue. , its gravestone carved with the words: Here Lies What Could Have Been. The crowd cheers, the band plays, and the undertakers shake hands with the kings.
Yet somewhere beyond the city walls, a few lions sharpen their claws, refusing the coffin. They roam in silence, waiting for the day they will leap, not to beg for space in the Hollow Empire, but to reclaim it. And when that day comes, the sun will rise for everyone, and the burial of brilliance will finally end.

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