Anaphora (an-aph’-o-ra): Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines.
My family’s muffins were great. My family’s muffins were the best. My family’s muffins saved England. It was 1210. England was ridden with warfare—people were lying around all over the place riddled with arrows, looking like sleeping hedgehogs. People were starving to death left and right—children, adults, whole families. People were so hungry they ate their own fingernails and toenails. Poverty was the norm. Nobody had money. They bartered what little they had, or became indentured servants. Most people wore feed bags or flour sacks and lived under rich peoples’ carriages. They had to move continuously to keep a carriage over their heads.
In short, it was hell.
My ancestor was Chief Baker to the King. While surrounded by poverty and starvation, the big fat king had an abundance of gold and an abundance of food. My ancestor thought it was obscene.
The king loved my ancestor’s muffins. He ate ten every morning for breakfast and three more before bed. After eating his morning muffins he would burp loudly and take a nap. His favorite were plum muffins. When he stuffed them into his mouth he made a smacking sound, drooled, and spilled crumbs all over the floor. Sometimes, he would do this while looking out a window, watching starving people starve. He would snort and laughter. He was a nightmare and a glutton.
My ancestor couldn’t stand watching the King’s antics. So, she started smuggling muffins out of the castle to feed the poor. She was caught and tortured, and returned to her duties. The King loved her muffins too much to have her executed.
The King’s birthday was coming. For his birthday, she would make him his annual giant muffin. This year, she would poison it. She couldn’t wait to see him writhing on the floor coughing blood. She used plague- ridden rat testicles, disguised as plums, to do the job, baking them into the muffin. The King gobbled down the muffin. It took the King a week to die, moaning for God’s mercy as he passed away in his blood- and sweat-soaked gilded bed.
The King’s brother Neville succeeded him. King Nevill was benevolent, releasing the realm’s royal assets to the Kingdom, feeding the starving, creating government jobs, and providing subsidies to craftsmen and tradesmen.
England was saved by a giant muffin baked by my ancestor Mrs. Bran Oxley. Oxley’s Muffins are still sold by my family all over England. They are known as “The muffins that saved England.”
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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