I. Persephone

Naive girls don't make good lovers
but I will sink into the comfort
of your clementine lips, grazing,
staking claim on my skin —
an offering to your kisses made of molten lead,
oh, how surely, how gently they trail,
like a river following its memory lane.

And yet, I have apologies etched on my skin;
I am a poem that bruises quickly
like petals on the soil.
So much for being the goddess of spring
when all I have are wildflowers
and moans scattered on the sheets of the dusk.

We know naive girls don't make good lovers
so cast me, Hecate, into firelight
where all your daughters burned.
Strip me of this sundress;
my chest was half of Demeter's softness
and half of the underworld's wrath.

And yet, I, too, am made of papercuts
forged to look like carmellia buds
lost and slow dancing in broad daylight,
your hands on my waist —
a quiet breath,
a delicate touch:

such curious ways of coming home.
Naive girls, they don't make good lovers
but I will pick you stray sunlights and goldenrods —
leave them by your bed;
these sheets know that
I belong to no throne.
I belong to no man.

And they say that naive girls don't make good lovers,
but only just;
darling, your walls are an eyewitness
to your gaze and my corruption.

So much for innocence
now neck-deep in mildew and anomalies.
So much for springtime,
its fields, now made
for us coming undone.
And so much for winter, darling —
so much for winter.

It may never come.