English Education

Persephone's Lament

I am the dirt beneath your feet. I do not question who I am. I am life, plucked at it's very finest stage, while also being death. There are some things eternal - flowers and mourning in someone's absence. His darkness covers me, fills me with his incessant longing for someone to know him better than he knows himself. He's like a skeleton head, sitting on a shelf. He can't be anything other than what he is - even if he makes others uncomfortable for he shows people the shadows people hide within themselves. It was shadow that drew me to him. I could no longer be the striking image of my mother no, I would not be gorging myself on sushi, brie, nuts, crab, grapes, and green tea my whole life. I would not spend my days gorging myself on the land, getting fat, pregnant, and my feet growing as roots into the grown, getting me stuck. There is pleasure in being his, in giving myself to death, destruction, and rebirth. Of course, there is struggle that comes with being the Queen of the Underworld. Sometimes he is not there. He's taken by demons I do not understand, retreating for a while, leaving me to wander the upper levels of the Underworld. I want to follow him, but instead, I'm stuck with the cries of ghosts. Stuck within my own thoughts - there to see myself not as a daughter, not as a lover, not even as the carer of souls, but as myself.

It's not enough to stay. I feel him retreating into the deeper caverns - that other world they refer to as hell. It's illuminated by a long string of lights, like an abandoned road. Hell has been wanting to take over Hades for a long time, claiming that humans would be a lot more loyal to Gods should they believe that they run the chance of eternal torture in the Afterlife. It pissed Hades off at first, to know that the Church wanted to pervert his Underworld paradise as a place of fear, when connecting to one's shadow has often been a source of great spiritual healing. He told me very little about what would happen when he would go there, except to say that there were Demons that would rise above the rocks with their horns and lengthy limbs. They frightened him and filled him with a sense of dread. Although Hades would insist that he was of little importance to Satan, that Satan was "running the good vs evil show just fine on his own," I would still feel as if he were leaving for longer and longer periods of time. I was worried, worried that at some point, I would forget who I was altogether because he was gone. It was a humbling experience - realizing that I am nowhere near where I need to be when it comes to understanding myself. I could see her so clearly now.

She swims through the waters. She says hello to me in my dreams. That she's come from the stars to swim through dreams, past and present, until she finds a center within herself. I am her, she is me, and yet we are separate from each other. I realize with more meditation, that it is pure fantasy to relate myself to this water maiden. She's his true mate, not mine.

I learn to give up my comfort. To stop searching for the sun of my mother as it tries to find me through the cracks within the Earth. I stop longing for Hades touch. I find myself wandering the paths to Hell, including one that Hades says "goes so deep into the Earth, it's impossible to find your way out."

That is where, when I finally whip up the courage, I take a deep breath, feeling my way slowly along the path to death.