Green Lady, Krista Canterbury Adams

Here lies my corpse in the forest:

Laid out on the rough stone slab

Under a star-whirled sky—

Wrapped up tight, arms and legs

Bound beneath the white shroud.

I am sprinkled with sprig of mistletoe,

A glazed mask placed most carefully,

Teetering just along the edges of my face

And gilded,

Gilded and silvered,

And shaped with great horns.

My corpse will be buried in branches

Of evergreen,

In the dark holly

With wax red berries.

And in your hand, you will carry

The white winter-flame,

To burn in firelight,

By candle and lantern,

In the deepest place of the wood,

In the shelter of cypress and fruit.

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Krista Canterbury Adams lives in Columbus, Ohio. Her influences include Algernon Blackwood, Anne Rice, Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton. She is a published poet, as well as a member of the HWA. Her work appears in Altered Reality Magazine, The Dark Sire, Collective Realms, Carmina Magazine, CC&D, Kelp Journal, BFS Horizons, The Fifth Di…, Illumen, and Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, among others.