Dear Persephone

There’s a little cloud called Regret hanging over me
Sometimes I forget it’s there until it rains and rains and rains
All the mistakes it believes I made down in my mind
(is this what they mean by acid rain?)
The flowers are about to bloom but I can’t leave it behind.
So dear Persephone come home
(Dear Persephone, are you listening?)
Take this cloud and sew it in your skirts
Make it something beautiful, like the pomegranate tree
That blooms under Hades’s dark brow, under Charon’s wild grin
Take the rain it gives and hand it to the Earth
Then, and only then, will the sun come out again.

—By Rodopiani C., 18, Greece