no doors in sight, if you ask me.

Poetry offer from the talented mind of u/Iron_Enjambment

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The king had a daughter who refused to marry. Seven princes had come to Isfahan with horses, pearls, and genealogies extending to the creation of the world. She had received each of them naked behind a curtain of silk and asked what he could see.

Six imagined her beauty and described it. The seventh described the curtain.

She sent them all away.

In the palace gardens lived a man employed to wash the marble statues. His name was Bahram. He was twenty-six and had a wife in Shiraz whom he had not seen for four years.

The princess watched him from the roof. He washed the statues with vinegar. Some were Greek, brought east by Alexander. Others were gods whose names had been forgotten.

One afternoon she summoned him to her chamber.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes.”

“Then why are you looking at my feet?”

“They are dirty.”

She examined them. She had indeed been walking barefoot in the forest.

“Wash them.”

He fetched a basin. She sat on a cedar chest while he worked. When he had finished, she asked him to continue.

“There is nothing more to wash.”

“You have not looked.”

He looked and she opened her robe. Beneath it, she wore only a narrow belt of hammered gold, fastened with a lion’s head.

“Can you undo this?”

He tried and failed. The clasp was stiff. She began to laugh, then moaned when his fingers touched her.

He kissed her stomach. She drew him up on top of her, and for many hours they forgot the difference between a king’s daughter and a man who cleaned stone with vinegar.

When she spoke again, her voice was more severe.

“There is a story,” she said, “that Jamshid possessed a cup in which he could see everything happening in the seven kingdoms.”

“I have heard it.”

“He could see the birth of children, the movements of soldiers, the cities of unbelievers, the dead waiting to rise again.”

“Yes.”

“He could even see his own death.”

“What happened to the cup?”

“My father has it,” she said. “It has passed from king to king.”

“Does he use it?”

“Every day.”

Bahram sat up.

“He has been watching us,” she said.

Bahram looked towards the door.

“Since when?”

“Since you began washing my feet.”

He stood and began searching for his clothes.

“My father is a very old man,” she said. “He has forgotten what the cup is really for.”

Bahram found his tunic beneath the bed.

“When I was a little girl, he would show me the cup. I saw armies slaughtered. I saw men digging for gold. Once I asked him to show me my mother, who was dead.”

“Did he?”

“He said the cup could show everything except what a man wished to see.”

Bahram dressed.

“And now?” he asked.

“Now he only watches me.”

She remained seated on the chest. Then she loosened the golden belt and let it fall beside the basin.

“Come to me again,” she said.