The Poe Cycle:

Track 3. The Bloom of Rot

Inspired by: “Ligeia” (1838)

Poe’s Original:

A grieving husband obsesses over his dead wife, Ligeia — a woman of beauty and will so powerful it defies death. When he remarries, his new wife dies mysteriously, only for Ligeia’s spirit to return, reborn in her corpse.

Sovereign’s Version:

In The Bloom of Rot, rebirth is no miracle — it is inevitability. The Sovereign becomes both the mourner and the resurrected, embodying decay as the final stage of love. Her return is not haunting but metamorphosis; the flesh wilts, the spirit flowers. Death is simply the soil she grows from again and again.

In stillness, I cradle the bloom undone,

A petal of flesh, a lover’s tongue.

It wilts for me — so soft, so kind,

Its scent of death, the peace I find.

I kissed the wound where beauty fades,

Watched color seep through skin’s cascades.

Each sigh a seed, each tear a vine,

That fed the rot and made it mine.

Love decays — but still it grows,

Through every fault the body shows.

The bloom of rot, divine, untrue,

I breathe in death and call it you.

Your shadow clings, your touch remains,

A flower’s kiss through silver veins.

Your eyes unclose where mine should weep,

Our vow decayed but buried deep.

I keep your scent, I keep your sound,

A garden grown from burial ground.

You fade… I bloom… the cycle sighs.

We live as rot — eternal ties.

The bloom of rot, divine, untrue,

I breathe in death and call it you.

The soil remembers — we become,

One breath, one bloom, one kingdom.

And in decay… I find my bloom.