Skeletal Contractions

She has her elbows pinned against her ribs.
You tell her that she is Persephone and
Charon will never ferry her back out.
She has knuckles like ginger snaps and
the bones crack under the king's fists.
Her eyes tread water as she cries
on a shoreline; her mother sits and winter
is busting out the door frames and her
tulip petal gown is splitting at the seams.
She is Persephone and she ate the seeds
of the grass that is always greener, and
now she can never return to the wilderness
of her mother's thorny hair. Sometimes
the summer of their existence reminds
her of dripping pomegranate seeds--
red like the sunset and salty like blood.