Winter

Like Persephone, I feel the icy grip of Hades’ hand,
Turning meadow flowers into cold wet leaves and darkness.
Fragments of memories dust the land with white.
Solar plexus aching for summer’s laughter.

Is there beauty here in this new land?
The silence offers healing and softness,
A possibility of rebirth,
With a heart freshly hardened to the past.

But in these first days, my hands grip the frozen crevice longing for warmth.
The Sun has forgotten about me.

Hades breathes his winter chill into my eyes,
Turning them frosty grey.
“You forget yourself.”
“Yes.”

And so I leave them all behind,
Rejection, disappointment, empty words,
Like crisp snakeskin shattered by the frost.

Thick mists between time swallow the longing.
Deep breaths.
A new cycle, another skin,
Harder and more resilient this time,
With an eternal flame of my own making.