I sang the hymns in holy halls,
Myrrh smoke following columns
Up to where Nut nestled the sickle moon
Between Her breasts.

The uraeus crowned my brow,
Protecting me from fever and snake bite
Wrought from the wicked god’s lair.

I was your priest, your servant, your lover,
But I was brought down in my prime
All while the sun shone sweetly,
And we lazily lapped each other up
As the Nile to its shore.

I should have known a dark fate awaited me
When, in the Glad Lands, I held my heart
In my hands and was turned away by She who would weigh it.

What had become of my vows to king,
To my beloved, to my Gods
That I was so cruelly denied entry
To the land of Everlasting Youth?

The uraeus burns my brow
Like the scorpion’s sting
And I wait, half-sleeping,
An undead servant
Longing for rest and redemption.

I long to walk those temple halls again
And sing those hymns that brought tears
To my lover’s cheeks
And a full granary to my king,
But my tongue is dry from longing
And jewels lie cold in my mouth,
My unpaid ransom for some sin I know not of.

Should I ever venture forth from my granite abode
What world will meet me?
What hymns sing out in temple halls?
I know the Gods must not be true
For why else would I languish,
I who know the verses of the universe?

Should I ever leave this tomb
What revenge I shall have,
What evil I will undertake.
My soul has plotted throughout millennia
To see the dawning sky again.

[Hayley Arrington is a writer of mythological and dark poetry and prose. She believes that myth is a verdant landscape where the Goddesses and Gods of old can be felt in the present. Her writings have appeared in a variety of venues, most recently in Alchemy and Miracles: Nature Woven into Words, Walk in a City of Shadows: Tales of Urban Legendry, and The Crone Initiation. Hayley lives in southern California with her husband and son. Visit her Arthurian witchcraft blog.]