The Last Tsarevitch

Another Sol Magazine contest: Choose one gift from this list: Health, hope, love, peace, respect, talent, wealth, wisdom, or freedom from fear. Write a titled narrative poem of no more than fifteen lines that shows how the entire world might have changed had a particular child been given this one gift.

I thought, What if the last of the Romanovs had been born healthy instead of hemophiliac? Would it really have made any difference?

Open the gate, Semyon; the young Prince is riding out
with dogs and horses, drunken friends and hangers-on.
Last month he rode a horse to death.
He whipped a dog--
the stablemaster had to put it down.
He cut down a man who wouldn't get out of the road.

That man lived. They say he's some crazy monk.
Now he's in the city with some intellectual friends
showing off his scars, talking strange talk,
handing around a book by some German- Markos? Marz?
They're saying... come close, I'll whisper it:
Revolution.