When The Hearth Grows Cold

By Jefferine George

The day her oath they broke, her hearth grew cold.

The day they broke into her abode, they broke home.

They gathered in a group of four,

Than what her vow gave, they wanted more.

The hand that was placed on Zeus’s head,

Was the very hand that was forcibly taken to bed.

She bared herself for the families below,

Her own family on seeing her bare, left her in woe.

A daughter who came first,

A sister who came last,

Yet no one ever said that she’d be replaced

By stained memory of the past.

Cause of her stains and smears, they cast her away

No longer in the golden palace could she stay.

She roamed the earth for a day or two,

A few years had flown before she knew.

Collapse she did finally, on mounts of sand,

As her eyes strayed to the gilded gates in that now faraway land.

But why was she the one forgotten and forlorn?

When her persecutors should be the ones before Justice’s throne,

Begging for mercy as lightening crashed,

While in viny chokeholds, they thrashed.

Waters drowned them, death surrounds them,

And the wrath of Hera followed them, all the way to the underground den.

But instead, her sisters forsake her, her brothers forbade her.

Their frown and scorn took her hearth for granted,

As with pointing fingers they proceeded to shame her.

Thus, upon the desert dunes, a new vow was made,

A vow to raise more embers,

Before she razed Olympus.

By Jefferine George

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