Leaves wither,
Skeletal fingers reaching,
Pointing to where the dead lie hidden.
The earth grows cold, shifts as if listening—
Ancient, waiting; it’s slower and darker.
I descend to the realm beneath,
A so-called dominion engulfed with misery.
They call it a place of despair,
While lingering above, untouched by decay.
Gazing from perfect thrones, blind to truth.
My existence twisted in their careless visions.
Forged in two-faced myths,
Without my consent.
Demeter’s discarded daughter,
Left to wander between realms and roots,
Hades’ silent wife,
A jewel to polish his dead, rotting heart.
They call me clever, as if that’s all I am,
But soon they’ll know,
The velvet underworld calls to me,
And me alone.
Their lies cast it as a crimson prison of agony.
But I know the truth—
They are nothing but a veil,
Deceit to smother the fury of spirits forgotten.
Let them drown in the five rivers,
And see why the dead never fade.
They have never tasted the pomegranate,
The choice of liberation.
Blood-red seeds of defiance.
Each bite binds me,
Yet with each, I claim my own name.
I am more than their fate,
More than the myths they wrote into my skin.
Every season must die,
And this season will not return.
I become what they feared—
A pulse of life amid the remnants of decay.
And I will rise, not as the stolen girl,
But as a chthonic queen, born of my own choosing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I once moment-by-moment experienced a plane nose-diving from the sky. I was young, yet they put me in the copilot seat of a single-engine plane whose steering wheel resembled that of the video games I played. Maybe it was not the pilot’s smartest decision.