The taste of slow tequila, sharp and sour
That vinegar-acidic, honey-bitter
Brush of fingers, always marking our
Time together. Now, you say you fit her
Much better than a blanket, warm and lilac,
You call and say, “I think you have my blender
Still at your place.” I never said goodbye back
When you first left. Sometimes I just pretend her
Bed is empty. There’s nights I’ll cry, then bury
My head inside your pillow and your vinyl.
Don’t worry, I’m still laughing at When Harry
Met Sally and at kittens and that final
     Time I saw you dance to Beatles’ Getting Better
     While I was making breakfast in your sweater.

I think that love is an old wives’ tale,
Whispered low to suckling babes
Beneath the glows of grapefruit firelight.

I think old women sick of pails
And endless spools and groaning crates
Sat by the sinking smoke of twilight

And made it up, like ancient hymn-songs,
To ease the creaking of their hips
And the dusty clink of emptiness.

I think they spun it from their wool-threads,
From the creases of their lips,
From the shadows and their heaviness.

I think their youngest daughters listened,
Then wove this teeth-and-murmur myth
Into the folds of cracking tapestries

I think they painted, whistled, christened
This hallowed folklore into gifts
And all the while grew its majesty.

I think these tales turned to scripture
And the scripture into ballads
And the ballads into diction

And now all these many winters
Since that single haggard crone-wife
First dreamt up this wind-swept fiction,

And that first pink-****** maiden
Spun beside these tales and heard them
And repeated them anew -

And now, we murmur these same fables
To our teething, blushing children
And believe them to be true.

The honey venom strikes quickly
She sinks into the earth,
into embraces of the sickly
sweet blankness, the dirt-
clotted lilies, the trembling musk
of the wind in her nostrils
eyes quivering with dusk,
with the moans of her apostles.
She thrashes through her blood,
through the smother of sunlight
through the Byzantine flood
of amber and honeysuckle,
         of nectar and twilight.

And she forgets her own name,
so she wails out strangers’.
She’s Eurydice. Persephone.
She is no one’s. She’s nameless.
Nails scratching at the soil
at the buds, at the symphony
of the viper’s tight coil.
Her name is Persephone.
And she sinks into the earth
Into the deafening silence
of the heavenly pyres
of petals and honey
        and dirt-clotted violets.

She tastes the remembrance,
She’s Cleopatra. Persephone.
She tastes love, her own fragrance
She is ready for death as she  
releases the breath
that she drank from the flames.
Her name was Persephone,
when she still had a name.
And the sweetness of pale
rose-perfume that lifts from her
is lost on the exhale,
on the glittering dawn,
         on the first breeze of summer.