spoonful of sugar

letter to demeter

hi! in class i was assigned to write a persona poem. here it is!

-

this place feels like a strange,

macabre second skin;

wide irises, crushed olives and grapes,

golden ichor that stings my veins.

it's distant shouts

and it's skipping into the dark,

spiked lips of deathless gods.

it is cold,

hungry.

i've been spending the time before spring

knocking on the surface of the world,

hoping i'd tumble back through

but i wear his ribs on my head like a crown,

and I wait, blooming, polishing, blistering.

the earth still breathes inside of me;

pomegranate seeds lay scattered

across my collarbone,

dark flowers sown into my cheeks.

he sits on my heart, braids my hair into a halo,

drinking the light and washing the watercolor dark-

beautiful things can happen in the dark

things can be learned

mother, you don't understand;

i swallowed the seeds with bursting will;

he ran to me.

he saw my flowering bones

like the first step of spring and

and I remember i fell through

hoops of dark cherry blossoms,

wilted in his cold hands

but i've studied his skeleton

on obsidian thrones

and yet he is a song of the dark, a fixing

of bitter borrowed sugar,

red wine-stained lips,

rotting bodies that invite roses to grow,

an empty skull stuffed with black lilies and ashes.

but how wonderful it is, how strange,

to be loved by one who spins death in his hands like one spins wool.

the ancient blood of

woman after woman after goddess

waiting inside me tired, seething.

we speak in flowers, in newly spun harvests too,

and now he tells me he would never want to keep me captive

and I slice the pomegranate in my own hands.

it is not so bad here.