#persephone reference

I want to write about pomegranates.

How in the supermarket in grey winter,

stomach acid gnawing away and rising

up my throat, more sadness and disillusionment

welling up inside me as another half-blossomed

moment soured and molded, I saw them

sitting there. Stacked high, the deep pink skin

like quince flowers in late December.

A reminder of becoming.

I want to pray to Persephone.

To keep me until this moment

of feeling so cold and so unseen

finally gives way to something greener.

Something less like frostbite. Something

less like heartache. Something less like

finding myself alone in the dark after every moment

I leaned across the table to devour his words

while thinking of how devouring we would be

later in the dark. Of how it was only ever me

offering myself up, broken open and ripe to the

point of redness.

I want Persephone to answer me,

to tell me how it felt to taste a few morsels

and find herself trapped. Did she regret it, too?

Did she want to go back to her mother and

girlhood desperately? Did she ever wake beside

Hades to find herself resentful of everything

she had given up to be his.

But instead I stand in the market line with

red-ripe pomegranate in hand, pretending

that the watery eyes are a winter’s cold

and not another bout of mourning.

I go home and split the fruit open as I have learned,

dipping it into water, slowly extracting each seed,

praying that I learn to weather the darkness