The Throne of Queens Has Its Beginning in Water

Issue 13

I was held beneath black water,
sudden surprise twist in the fairytale.
 
I learned to breathe there,
suffocation of dark wet oxygen,
and now I am a ghost of lavender,
paled star earth-walking,
journeying back to myself.
 
I feel it as I drive,
a bloom from freeze into a kind of flight,
away from you, higher, above the black wave,
as I listen to my playlist of wilted songs
deep with evening-garden-lyric meanings
and velvet skies of love lost and sacrifices made
to the ultimate morning of the world,
everything the color of chilled apricots,
a peace where earth smells of rain and dreamy fruit,
birds perched on watercolor branches,
and I continue my quest,
I seek the rim of the sun like a fallen angel,
become a gold bird as I emerge from the sea,
I was paled, altered,
but now I walk, hands bound, still a slave to love,
ever forward,
filled with bee magic,
seeking rare flowers,
buzzing, vibrating sun into my pores,
my honeyed fingertips radiant
because I know he has not killed me,
unsuccessful in his attempt
to rend me limb
from limb,
as I climb from the sodden world
as a queen bee from mud in the spring thaw.

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Ruth Martinez has works published in Ofrenda Magazine, Lunaluna, Cordella Press, Poetry As Promised, Witchology Magazine, The Hopper, Black Moon Magazine and Ice Floe Press. She co-wrote an Indie book of poetry, Crow Moon, with her good comadre Anna Griego, and Bottlecap Press published her chapbook Root Women.

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