STEP ONE: A SEDUCTION
(she wraps her pretty red lips -
a shade named pomegranate, not cherry -
around the neck of a bottle and bats her darkened eyelashes,
a wordless invitation to the man across the bar
who pretends not to notice as she slips in the heels
she stole from her mother’s closet)
STEP TWO: A DECEPTION
(she lets him take her home -
makes her body soft, pliant -
he offers the seeds and she lets them stain her chin
like a sacrifice, like blood. she smiles as she kisses him,
and she lets him think that all this
was his idea)
STEP THREE: A KINGDOM
(in this world, it it widely known
that the name persephone means bringer of destruction -
she is hunger, she is greed, she is want,
and there is nothing more devastating
than the ambition of a teenage girl)