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.