Cold light crawls
across the lawn,
stains the crocuses red.
Dawn claims the waking earth,
savage in its taking.
Your fingers glide along mine,
the blanket,
the wet loam beneath,
but you are no more mine
than nature is under God’s dominion.
You live doubly these days.
You are here
and elsewhere,
lodged in the silver cracks
between life
and nowhere.
he built for her a duplicate of earth,
everything the same, down to the meadow,
but with a bed added.
Everything the same, including sunlight,
because it would be hard on a young girl
to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness.
Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night,
first as the shadows of fluttering leaves.
Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars.
Let Persephone get used to it slowly.
In the end, he thought, she'd find it comforting.
They meet again
after five ten fifteen years.
He has a son now.
She's had three miscarriages.
His irises are bluer
than she remembers,
shifting in the low light
like cold water over quartz.
She still wears her troubles like tattoos,
secure in their permanence.