She Who Destroys

She stutters on the threshold:

a sun fixed on the horizon.

Bodies softly 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.