poetry
Persephone Wins Custody of Herself
by Marisca Pichette in Issue Twenty-Two, February 2026
here at the edge, I’m ready to fall.
Lean in, little girl—
drop pumpkin blossoms into my depths
Look into the dark and tell me
you don’t want to go.
between cold-pink toes
the grass my mother worked so hard to plant
wilts, browns, dies.
white dress stained muddy at the hem,
hair tangled with sticks
I catch a snowflake in my teeth.
You were never spring, nor summer.
You grew only enough to fade
Shed your gossamer, trade petals
for skins remembering warmth.
Alice fell by accident, arms pinwheeling
down, down.
I fall on purpose.
I do it every year.
I spread my body over the abyss,
tuck my weary hair behind my ears
and jump.
Earth to earth, frost to dust.
Here in the ever-dark, winter makes
no sound.
When the seasons fracture, we look up.
Leaves aren’t all that tumble from the sky,
carpeting our humble underworld.
You fall, and fall, and fall.
there’s a name for this—
suicide, hibernation, runaway.
bad daughter, goth wife,
crafty, avoidant, irresponsible
to throw ice over everything,
trade green for arctic gray.
but I am not my mother.
I never was.
I’ve listened to the soil, dug my fingers
into mycelial webs.
When I was just a girl, I tapped into the living underworld
and I learned—
we can none of us run
year-round.
So you jumped.
And jumped.
And jumped again.
falling, I look back
at a tired sky
landing, I know
this seasonal death
is as hard-won
as the last.
© 2026 Marisca Pichette
Marisca Pichette
Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts. She has published more than three hundred pieces of short fiction and poetry, appearing in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, The Deadlands, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, Asimov's, Nightmare Magazine, and many others. Her poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Elgin Awards. Their eco-horror novella, Every Dark Cloud, is out now from Ghost Orchid Press.