Persephone

He took my body

Dragged me below mud

Carried over a river, open, with hands that clawed, pulling against my navel

Down with us, girl

Down, down, down

I am a captive

No, I am a villain

I have come to live a life here

Amongst the dead

They watch me feast

On seeds tossed into a lake

I am the heroine

I am his babe, his queen, his princess

He is so lonely

He hates the water

He hates the Gods—thee god: his brother

He is a marble, a marvel, a statue in black

Knife-point nose, arrow-lipped monster

I open myself to the monster below

His eyes lock to mine

Give me permission.

I nod because I can

because somewhere between the garden and our bedroom

A story grew

A story I don’t want to tell my mother

I want him because he asks for permission

I want him because he is not you

His tongue is warm

I lay my back down

Hard stone cools the dip of my back

I say: Hades!

She’ll never let me go.

I will make you happy, he says

You are, I murmur

You are.

Mother comes quickly

She’s all the rage

I am still naked, my legs, his arms

She pulls me from our bed

Hands colder than the stone

Six months, that’s all I get?

Six months, before I’m wet?

My husband’s brother is laughing still

He gets the sky

He gets to play

My husband gets me for six months a year

I kiss his mouth

I kiss myself

There, there, mother

It is not I you want

It is Zeus, my father, the greatest god

Or the biggest monster

But the greatest god is between my legs

Worshipping me

Drinking the pomegranate from my fountain

There, there.

We go up, and down, together.

This sculpture, Anelito Fuggente (1914) by Ruperto Banterle, captures a body in the act of leaving while still held in intimacy. The male figure represents life (or, in Hades’s case, Death) a lover trying to keep the woman from slipping away.

But in my interpretation of Persephone, the force of separation is her mother. Persephone chooses Hades without resistance.

The sculpture becomes the moment where she is involuntarily pulled away, her body still in his arms, mid-intimacy, but already threaded to another force. She’s being abducted and betrayed by someone who’s made her feel unseen all her life: Demeter.