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“Invite them to your table.”

She began carefully, at the outermost circle of each table,
where dust gathered in the forgotten carvings
and silence clung to the craftsmanship like incense.

There, she started.

With reverent hands she polished every frame,
tracing each delicate curve as though searching for the hidden pulse beneath it.
But every ornament concealed something living:
a thorn of pride,
a splinter of vanity,
a sudden blade of temper rising from polished wood.

And each time, she retreated.

Yet at the center sat the sovereign —
the king,
or perhaps the queen,
or perhaps only the voice wearing both faces at once.

It called her back.

Not to worship.
Not to kneel before altars built by frightened minds.
Not to cleanse the chairs of those who abandoned themselves there.

“Sit,” the voice whispered.
“This time, sit.”

Still she fled at every imperfection,
every sharpened glance,
every gaze that sought to define her before she had named herself.

Until one day,
without knowing when the boundary dissolved,
she was no longer sitting at the table.

She was the table.

She could become the wood and the feast,
the queen and the centerpiece,
the mourning dove resting above the ruin.
She could become the room itself if she desired.

But the one thing she could no longer become
was hidden.

And so they came.

The bigots.
The exiled.
The narcissists.
The lovers condemned by fearful men.
The obedient slaves of borrowed consciousness.
The ones still circling altars they secretly despised.

And she invited them in,
one by one.

Because at last she understood:
the voice calling her back had never come from outside her.

Neither had the tyrants.
Nor the fascists.
Nor the judges seated upon trembling thrones.

They were chambers within her own consciousness,
fragmented selves gathering around the same sacred table,
returning piece by piece,
altar by altar,
memory by memory,
until nothing remained divided.

And then she feared no one.

Not the altar.
Not the centerpiece.
Not the queen.
Not even the hand that once tried to cast her out.

For she had undone them all
with a single movement of awareness —
one flick of her wrist,
one unwavering point of consciousness.