Like a plant reaching towards the sun, as autumn comes my heart begins turning towards Persephone.
As I mentioned a few days ago in my Virgo Season newsletter, Virgo is the sign of the Maiden. Persephone before she enters the underworld. Each of us when we are fresh and scarless. Virgo as the part of us who never was and can never be defiled by hurt, or abandonment, or loss.
The Maiden in each of us has much to teach. She sees the point in caring. She has boundless energy. She can lose herself in focused concentration without stumbling over self-doubt.
Persephone is abducted and taken to the underworld in Scorpio season.
But every year, Virgo season comes again, offering us an opportunity to revive the undaunted wisdom of our youth.
You can access this month’s Witch Guide in the Subscriber section below.
Remember, poetry allows us to glimpse between the veils into the Otherworld. It offers a kind of language that allows us to speak intimately with the spirits that dance there.
I know you’ll be as obsessed with this piece as I was!
Queen of Any World That Took Me
by Lauren Eggert Crowe
By the time he arrived, night
had lengthened by a whole
minute. Near the close of pomegranate
season, all that had ripened in the heat
now smoldered in another heat.
I knew exactly what kind of winter
I was inviting in when his mouth
met my own, when I tasted black
pepper, chlorine, mint, ash.
The warmth lingered like a dry red.
I knew that bite would hold me
there in the humming dark.
He touched me as a swan touches thick
water: velvet on silk. So I slackened,
I tumbled deeper in sweet. But my word
is forward. My mother is waiting. I am
my mother and I wait for my unroping.
So few know the trick, how to split
the heart in ice water, let
arils spill cleanly, skim the sponge
off the heavy treasure. How red and wet
I look to the boys with their amps
and sweaty denim. Who hasn’t
ignored the gods for a plate
of cut fruit, jewel-packed
and glowing like a lamp? I did
what any daughter would do: I managed
opposing promises and halved the year
with a cold knife. I created more
of myself. That didn’t keep anyone
from blaming me for the weather.
You try learning the thievery of
your body kick-started the calendar.
Then you, too, might offer yourself to
be sliced by the teeth on an iron gate.
You would dive and surface, a needle
sewing your home to his until neither
is yours. You would even unbraid
the flaxen sheaves of your girlhood
at the lip of a continent aching
to combust, crumble, and melt.
If my throat is an altar, everything
I swallow is sacred. Ask me
to regret that handful of garnets.Gorgeous, no? I feel like that piece reaches into the underworld and pulls out the part of my younger self that fell in, shining her up until she remembers she’s sacred again. You can find out more about Lauren’s work and follow her newsletter here.
Let me know your favorite line in the comments below! Mine was the one I used to title this newsletter, obvs. But there were so many beauties to choose from!
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