They tell the tale as if she was stolen.
As if her cry was the end of her story.
As if the earth swallowed her whole, and she never learned to breathe in the dark.
But they forget—
She did not remain the trembling girl in the field.
No, she learned the names of shadows.
She walked the black halls with bare feet,
and the stones remembered her.
She tasted pomegranate not as punishment,
but as initiation.
Each seed a vow.
Each burst of red a remembering.
Down in the underworld,
she was not only held—
she was met.
She was mirrored.
They do not say how the crown fit perfectly.
How the throne did not bind her but belonged to her.
How even the ghosts bowed, not out of fear,
but recognition.
When she rose,
it was not as the girl who was taken—
but as the woman who had returned.
Crowned in both bloom and bone,
she carried the underworld in her gaze,
and spring unfurled at her feet
not because she had escaped death,
but because she had become life.
They do not tell you this,
but she was never just the queen of the dead—
She was the Queen of Return.
Of Resurrection.
Of the in-between.
And in her hands,
she held the keys to both.
