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emlyn lua Sep 2019
Aphrodite resides in my heart.
She has been there since I wished
with no hope of solution
for loneliness to be gone.

She did that.
She Did That.

My love is an ocean yet I
I keep it in the pearlescence
of a shell I found on the shore.
Does my goddess purse her lovely lips
when she feels my fear?

Fear
of vulnerability, goddess,
of your power over me.

What is worship without fear?
Awful, terrific, exposed
to the mercy of your torment.

Perhaps soon I shall meet another
who knows the ache of her in the chest
when we look into each other’s eyes.
I pray for someone who has an ocean
like mine, boundless and full of life.

Ah, then we could mingle our waters
until two oceans become one
and proud Aphrodite can swim there
guiding the currents to where they need to be.
emlyn lua Sep 2019
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.

— The End —