spotlight: A Violet Stretch of Sky

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Re: A Violet Stretch of Sky

A Violet Stretch of Sky is inspired by poet Meggie Royer’s fascination with folklore, mythology, and the experience of processing traumatic memories. In this collection, Royer imagines beloved artistic and literary figures such as Virginia Woolf and van Gogh in conversation with women of myth, examines the complex nature of relationships marred by love and violence, and attempts to reconcile her teenage self with her adult self.

Excerpt from A Violet Stretch of Sky

Persephone to van Gogh


In the spring, there was nothing but cornflowers for miles,
body rising from the earth like a pendulum,
& frost burned through the glades like a constellation.
Tell me, how young were you when you felt it first:
your dark overtaking the light,
your pulse dancing around the topic of ending itself.
Ribot’s law: recent memories are more likely to be forgotten
than those from the past.
I was Queen of the Underworld; if I could cleave away
the night I was taken, this whetstone of loss,
this endless sheaf of grain, I would. I would.
Tell me, before you drew the knife to your ear,
was it fear you felt
or relief?