before I found myself
walking back into Asphodel.
As I walked that day
through the meadows,
the scent of lavender
mixing with mist.
I heard the sound of
reuniting families.
Brother meeting brother,
sisters together again,
fathers seeing their sons,
but the pull I felt most
was towards the women
still waiting for their loved ones.
Women who were all alone
but, like the North Star,
shone like celestial bodies
in these grey fields.
Every War Had Them
The women who got here first.
Some of them were scarcely more than girls.
Others wore maps of memory across
their aged skin, long silver hair cascading
like water down their backs.
They found one another in these fields,
learned to make families out of each other
when their own loved ones were nowhere
to be found. I know this because in those
early days, I had grown close to the ways
of the spirits inside these meadows.
