She stutters on the threshold:
a sun fixed on the horizon.
Bodies susurrate as she wades through them.
A daily routine – but what are days?
The cavern underneath the world admits no light from sun or moon,
Sight granted by the fragile luminosity of the pale, pale once-alive.
She walks through the dead:
has always walked through the dead
will always walk through the dead
Or – her mother was life, is life, above –
She stutters on the threshold.
Clarity.
She no more meanders, but strides.
The sun creaks and groans, and rises.
Breaths short and sharp, she runs:
A tree, an illogical tree in an illogical garden,
In this illogical cavern.
(but this was before logic)
Hunger pangs do not slow her,
She is hungry for change, for resolution;
For conclusion to dim the gnaw of uncertainty.
A globe gripped in a quivering hand.
She peels back the membrane
(like the skin of the earth as it opened to swallow her)
Scoops a glistening fistful of rubies
And gulps them down,
Blood of the fruit painting her chin like a child at the close of October,
Play-acting, false horror, for the sake of cloying sugars;
Her eyes are not that of a child.
She kisses the mouth of He that stole her.
They ascend, hand in terrible hand;
He sits, gestures, to Her new place beside him.
With a smile of crimson certainty,
The Queen of the Underworld takes Her throne.
