I, Persephone

(A classic myth retold as from a trauma survivor. Originally written 12/27/22. Content warning - mentions of slavery, torture, betrayal, and rape)

I managed to shake the watchers that tail me. I won’t have long to myself, but enough to follow the path they always steer me away from. It calls me… mysterious and also somehow familiar.

I follow, feet quick. Pulled, compelled. There’s some thing back here, I just know!

I stand now on the edge of the pit. I’ve seen this same edge in nightmares… but how could that be? All these many years of sunshine in pleasant fields have been haunted by those dreams. I thought I was just broken…

But I know now that something real is down there. I’ve been here before, or was destined to come here now…unclear. 

My knees buckle, and I feel terribly, terribly afraid.

The watchers have been keeping it from me. I feel that much. I may never break free of them again. I don’t have long before they catch me. If I’m going to act, I must.

I MUST know. 

I MUST face what lies below in the depths, or accept the placid little life they meter out.

But this is also my Territory…so I commit.

Like Ulysses, I strap my head to a board so that I may not look away and leap. Sailing in fast is the only way. There’s no time for a tie-toe approach.

I leap. And fall…

Then in flashes I see it.

My hair stands on end. It would flee in horror. Instead my very skin peels away, blasted by the awful truth hidden there.

It is ghastly. But I face it, the only way left is down.

Falling, I see it all as though from above - that this is where he first raped me. This is where he stole me away from everyone I knew. This is the very gate through which he hid me to claim and own me.

I’d forgotten that it ever happened. I thought I’d only ever been in the quiet light above. A peaceful, quiet one, so clean and virginal.

But it wasn’t true.

It had been true horror in his domain. He dreamed up a sadist’s pleasures and fed me to his friends again and again. I was a slave, chained, and at their mercy, of which Hades has little. A fake out here or there, followed only by deeper torments. 

…Was I here days, or years. I somehow do not know.

But I know I was so, so young! I didn’t understand the things they did. Only felt terror and disgust and crushing shame. He’d whispered often that it was all my fault for being so shapely. I thought it true... and took that blame into my flesh…I felt it there still, buried so deep but rising as my very flesh melted.

The memories seem to loop, coming fast. They blow my divine being to meaty pieces as I continue to fall. No mere mortal flesh could have survived it then, nor this remembering.

As gore and chunks, I hit bottom and remember too how I escaped.

I had splintered my own hands and feet, pulled bloody stumps through the shackles, and dragged myself back to the surface. I’d never known such wounding, and had been sure my limbs would never heal. They did, of course, but I realize now that those faint scars have marked me ever sense, though I did not recognize them.

I realize too that my mother claims she saved me, and that I’d fallen in with him by some character flaw, wandering too far while picking flowers. That had I been a better rule-follower I’d have been safe and unharmed. It explains so much of these subsequent years above the surface and why she’s hovered the way she has. And why she’s sicced so many gurus my way who claim they could “fix me”.

And why the watchers are always there. I thought they were protecting me, their precious princess. I see now that to them I was tainted by the underworld. They were protecting their Sunshine Realm from me, my “Maiden” nickname but a marketing campaign! Or perhaps cruel humor?

I lay on the bottom of my pit staring at the sky, framed by this earth, a small bright circle far above. My mind, it seems, is split much like the world - above and below. It hid all the darkness and showed only light.

I keep expecting that maybe her shadow will appear at the rim, looking for me. Does she even care? I suspect not. She only ever wanted the Maiden for her own purposes. Not the broken, complex mess that I actually am.

I realize I no longer care for her “care”.

She forgave him, my captor. She’s made nice since, even cut a deal. Found some ways to profit from my pain to make up for the lost value of a true Maiden. “We divines are stuck with each other” I’ve heard her say. Now I wonder who she meant…

Which is worse? His brutality or her betrayal?

The betrayal turns my bones to dust. I realize I am no one’s daughter, so I may as well have never been. Earth to earth and ash to ash…

Bodiless and boundary-less, my memory is complete now. And divine as I am, memories are all I need to Know Myself.

The pain I know will always linger, just as dear Prometheus said it would …once the light of knowledge finally found me. I had no idea this is what he meant.

I bask in it now, letting it remind me I’m still real, and still here, even formless as I am.

…Formless as I am…

The circle of sunshine light above. A circle of dark, dank soil below. A wisp of soul. Cool tall walls sweating mineral possibilities all around for leagues. I Am This Now.

All possibilities.

So long I cared what she thought and who I was supposed to be, loyal to our lineage. But emotionally she cut me off long ago… I see that now.

(Damn, that aches! These types of thoughts will always be my personal eagles, soaring in to tear at flesh just starting to heal.)

Formless, I am free.

Who do I want to be?

I could be a mouse and return to this dark world that stamped its stink on me. I saw plenty while I was captive here.

Or I could be a revenge seeking dragon! I’ve seen those too. I could go fry her and all her gurus. Wreaking havoc on the Sunshine world might soothe my aches, or at least share them. It has a kind of appeal…

I could even climb back up and reconstitute like nothing ever happened, turn my back, and just walk on. Wash off some of this stink and pretend to fit in with all the mortals again.

Ugh, why though?

I ponder these and myriad more options, fiddling with familiar shapes and attitudes to see what might fit. But none do now. They are all too small.

I must be something new, something the world has never seen.

A spectacular crown materializes within my essence. It asks if I would claim my rightful place.

“What’s that?” I ask.

The Earth Herself answers: “You are of me, Persephone - Queen of the Underworld, and of Life and Death itself.”

I unfold myself upward, outward, and down. As above, so below. Shapeshifting, I am what I am, fragrant and reborn. I claim my crown.