Persephone and the Sea

I will admit, I once called the Earth my home. Demeter and I would loom above the ground, singing the trees alive. But my heart shuddered for adventure. Life was too stable for the frolicking heart of mine. I will admit, the Doors of Death echoed me still. They were enchanting windows to a new world. I told myself it was worth the fear of suffocation. And I so, so, so love pomegranates. Hades was never cruel — but he was aggressive in his love. I do not think he knows what love is. His gold laced fingers reached over my body, his lips took mine without asking, his romances relentless. Demeter’s call was somewhat of a relief. My independence could never let me be owned. Not by Hades…not even by my mother. I may have had returned to the Earth, but only for a human’s life. One year, I visited the Ocean to escape my mother’s pleas. She saw the bruises Hades left me when I had to leave him. She demanded to call me for eternity, but her own affection was thorns. I assumed I could swim, but my visits to mermaid coves were puddles compared to the Ocean. He saved me. He rose from the water, just speeding by, and with a sudden movement, he became my savior. I never was one for lofty beings, but I immediately — and irrevocably — fell in love with Poseidon.

He, unfortunately, was married, but he, unfortunately, was caught in nets of lovers. I knew I could never catch his attention, so I was simply aloof, sometimes witty, and always grotesquely in need of his presence. Besides, I was gone for half of forever. I kept visiting him when mother did not notice I was gone. He was easily distracted, but he was beautiful in his fortified heart, his wandering soul, and his shadowed laugh. It has been forty decades since I met him, and nothing has changed. We may have fought the world apart sevenfold, he may have noticed my love and rejected it, and he may have forgotten that nothing has changed, but his eyes still are every chapter of my endless novel. When I tell him I must leave — Hades was waiting — he nods easily and returns to his Queen. I deeply considered drowning myself, but there would be no use. Immortality was the curse, but water never seemed that bad of a suffocation