Persephone in Four Parts

The day Persephone threw herself into the sea

It would have been difficult for her to carve out the parts of herself that still belonged to him; an arm, some teeth, the world between her legs, a rib here and a rib there. As usual, she had one elbow in hell and was looking across the fog towards the banks of what made her human, always choking on the seeds of it. What do you do with yourself when hell is done with you? Was there no fire after that? It was always so hard to remember.

Persephone lifted her skirts

From her winter home to her summer home, she was allowed to take only the things on her back. Endless years passing back and forth had taught her to keep the things she held dearest close to her. She carried few things in her hands. Most of it, the parts she couldn't stand to look at, were stitched to the undersides of her skirts. They could be split up into three categories: things that bleed, things that scream, things that have no name.

The things that bleed were the most difficult to keep. Under her skirt she had stitched parts of the people who had loved her and failed. A heart. An eye. Teeth and muscle. Tufts of hair. All of these things a name and a year and another reason to forget. She kept them around so she wouldn't. They never stopped bleeding.

The things that scream were less screaming things and more words she couldn't live without. They were stitched in between the things that bleed and they reminded her what she was and where she had been. Touch. Here. My own girl. These were the things that screamed. They screamed so loud, sometimes, that she could barely hear them. Some days, on the passage to or from hell, she would look at the things that scream and not know where they came from. They must have belonged to another girl, once.

The things that had no name were indeed un-nameable things. They were the air from home caught between her petticoats, the smell of a sea that was not on fire, dirt from a land that did not burn her, the love of her mother. These were things that had no weight. Most of the time, she didn't even notice they were there.

Persephone lifted her skirts and spread them around herself like she was a morning glory.

Persephone's tongue

An infinity of indecision. Sometimes she felt she was always moving backward, backward, backward over and against, curling up around the edges and losing herself in the spaces where the molecules ceased to be her. The place where she became not herself, where she met the outside. That spot that was neither here nor there and inconsequential. She was finding ways to move all of herself into these spaces.

Persephone tongued the secret in her mouth. She held the secret there like a lullaby. Six unswallowed seeds moving and cutting her tongue, the delicate strings of her meaning. For years she was afraid to open her mouth, afraid of losing them, afraid of swallowing. This is what indecision bought you. Infinity had stolen her voice.

Everyone assumed they knew where she belonged. They marched over her like a battlefield and did not bother to tell her why. It didn't matter. They never asked her if she minded being saved. She had been expected to tilt her head back and swallow. No one considered the possibility that she hadn't.

This was the secret she kept for herself. Hell was something you carried with you.

Persephone contemplates beauty

No amount of bleeding ever brought death, so she considered blood to be one of her finest hobbies. There was plenty of pain, as was proper for a place like this, but no death. Not here. Sometimes, on one road or another in hell, she'd open herself up just to see her entrails dragging behind her like a wedding train. There should be that, at least. One small honeymoon and her, a bleeding virgin bride.

This was also blood that never brought life. Nothing grew here, it just was. She'd fuck herself against Hades, or any other cold soul around, and the result was only emptiness. A place emptier than nothing. Not that she wanted a daughter here or, even worse, a son. The organs themselves she removed. It offered no help.

She held her own kidney in her mouth once and, chewing it softly, contemplated beauty. There was a lifetime of beauty here. Unfortunately, a lifetime didn't last long. She'd been through so many of them already. Beauty, after a while, became a bland cage with a pretty view. And here she was, just another beautiful thing in hell. Cataloged and filed away, never dying. She just was.

But still, there was grace in the blood.