Demeter

by Barbara Crooker

It was November, when my middle daughter
descended to the underworld. She fell
off her horse straight into coma's arms.
He dragged her down, wrapped her in a sleep
so deep I thought I would never see her again.
Each day, the light grew dimmer, as Earth
moved away from sun. I was not writing this story;
no one knew the ending, not the neurosurgeons,
not their fancy machines. Her skin grew pale,
the freckles stood out like stars, and every
twenty-four hours she was further away.
I called and called her name, offered to trade places,
ate six pomegranate seeds, their bleeding garnets
tart on the tongue. Her classmates took
their SATs, wrote their entrance essays. She
slipped down into the darkness, another level
deeper. I was ready to deliver her to college,
watch her disappear into a red brick dorm, green
trees waving their arms in welcome. Not this,
season without ending, where switches changed
the darkness to light, and breath was forced
through tubes and machines, their steady hum
the only music of the dim room. The shadows
under her eyes turned blue-violet, and pneumonia
filled her lungs.

And then, one morning, slight as the shift
from winter to spring, her eyelids fluttered,
and up she swam, a slippery rebirth,
and the light that came into the room
was from a different world.