Princess

The Trail Where They Cried,
it began here.
The place of rejection is now home,
and her own tears have begun.

Crazed, fatal ironies,
to bring her back here,
to place named after the foe,
the one who drove the carts.

A new journal and trial.
Anabasis through cyberspace,
to leering dwarf's abode
down below the civilised world's ending.

The trial is her love,
taken, returned and yet spurned
by growing dwarven madness
creating silence instead of refrain.

Desperate, broken, rejected.
Call of the orb proved too strong.
The place where she cried is now empty,
but for a flower born of her tears.

The dwarf is now done with leering,
wrapped in guilt as deep as a shroud.
His turn now for the weeping
over the place where she used to cry.

The love of my life was a Cherokee. Her people were forced out of what is now Tennessee on what is popularly known as The Trail of Tears, although I understand a more literal translation of the Cherokee would be Trail Where We Wept. When I first 'met' her on the Internet, she was living in a small town in Sevier County, Tennessee. This is the same territory that her forebears were forcibly removed from. The county is named after Governor Sevier who, long before his time in political office, was part of the group that helped physically round the Cherokee up and load them onto carts for their journey away.

To me, she will always be my Cherokee Princess.