I remember rage beneath a silver moon
The night that sealed my fate
They tried to warn me but I, I was foolish
I picked the daffodils anyway
The earth opened up below me
— blinded, I threw my hands up
Come, the darkness said
The light would not touch him
The light could not bear him
Nor can I
I know the journey well now, though I dread it more each year
Taste the honey on my lips
Pale gold sunlight
The earth swallows me whole
and I
I am pulled down into the blackness of the netherworlds
Far above me, the last pale ray of sunshine is closed away
Darkness closes in once more
The realm of the dead
The ghosts of forgotten children bring me white roses,
Sacred to the dead
The dead greet me silently with their numb presence
holding bones in their bloody hands
My tears turn to ice
Winter
The frozen world waits above
Festival of Hades
These are the ashes in the dark, ashes in my heart,
Ashes in the world I left behind
They tell me the earth dies with me when I fall into the abyss
The air freezes and the crops will not grow
I walk the shores of the Styx below a mountain of skulls
Wander the underground realms, with its halls and its caverns
Its teeming Stygian madnesses
Rooted here in darkness like a seed in the earth
waiting for the sun, waiting to bloom
waiting for spring
My mother’s tears reached even into the land of the dead
Futile, as are the tears of all mothers
I cannot untie the curse that binds me
But I know I will be free again someday
I am waiting for the springtime fires
And these things I run from, these demons, these pale dead things
The lords of the underworld
They will fall away behind me into the dark earth and I, I will  be free again
I will turn my face up and feel the sun and rain on my skin
These things bloom in my thoughts like flowers or fires
These things I hold sacred
Against the rumble of hatreds in the earth

[Morgan Sylvia is an Aquarius, a metalhead, a displaced Yankee and a work in progress. Born and raised in Maine, she currently lives in Florida. Her work has appeared on writersmontly.com, Broken Mirrors, Tales from the Moonlit Path, and Once Upon An Apocalypse.]