Persephone

No one asked me.
He just rode up
from a crack in the Earth.
Black lightning
in a gold-wheeled chariot.
The horses, bridled
in silver,
diamonds studding the wheels.

Trust me.
You’d swoon too.
Wake up breathless,
married
in a hot bed
licked by cool flames.

You’d eat the seed too.
You’d want that kind
of power rooted
inside you.
Yes, don’t lie.

Mother, we could not
have continued like that forever,
Earth, our secret garden.

Flowers get plucked.
They fade.
They die.

Without roots,
they are dead forever.

Without seed. . . .

Mother, you don’t understand.
You can’t remember
how a god can lord
over you,
bring you to the point
of death,

turn you into an explosion
of flowers.

-Radiance Writer



Photo by Fanny Gustafsson on Unsplash


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