187. The Land of the Living
The Land of the Living
What shocked me out of my grief
was just how simple it was
to find our way out of Hades.
In my still-young mind
I had thought it would be
the current of a thousand seas,
the might of a hundred furies,
a path divined to be so long
that the traveller gave up
and simply returned to the Underworld.
Instead, Thanatos took the boat
to the very end of Mnemosyne
and together we walked out
of the Cave of Dusk, just as
Helios rode his chariot to set
the glorious gold of the sun.
The outside of the cave was drenched
in a better gold than the Elysian Fields.
Every flower, every blade of grass
would live a shorter life, but
as the warm earth beneath my feet
told me, this was the way
it was supposed to be
in the land of the living.