7 April

Day 7

Like Hell

Hela in Thor Ragnarok

just isn't right-
I imagine her as a young woman,
a teenager really, her tar slick hair
covering her half dead face,
clear skin, clean skull,
serious and moon white

Sometimes she is the Wolf,
others the Snake
She does not camp it up,
no crown of antlers, thorns,
But combs her length of hair
until it's a black rainbow

Then starts on the bureaucracy of death,
her dress of mermaid skin,
her hair of sea wrack bones,
her sigh, like the north wind
as she watches her father bait the Gods again.
One day there'll be a reckoning

Her left hand trembles, tired
by the counting in, the blessing of the dead
In her rooms, the old , the children, 

mothers wait and whisper.
She knows them all, by name,
is cold comfort, forever.

Her love is Wolf of jaw and Snake of tail