Persephone

The night is as black and as thick
as the charcoal swimming inside
the place I was so quick
to place the pills,
bitter capsules of death.
The taste made me sick,
but not too ill to forget.
The taste of death lasts for days,
but the stale flavor doesn’t taste
quite the same.
I think in that hospital bed I grew
tired of this nursery game,
tired of the madness I made
inside my head where it grew
into a Cerberus, and I paid
the price to pass the river Styx.
The cost was life; I had to be dead.
I paid in pain instead
Am I no longer Persephone,
who bit into the pomegranate,
red running down my arms like a symphony?
I was half alive and half dead.
The decree from Zeus so clearly read
that I was damned to the underworld
for half a year- half my life.
Never to fully see the sun.
I was Hades’ reluctant wife,
stolen from the field of youth’s flowers,
starved and beaten for hours
until hunger set in.
The forbidden fruit
tasted like sin.
A diet of death-
a diet of life.
Ragged breath
as I held the knife.
But I’ve been damned too long.
The Underworld is enticing,
but I don’t truly belong
in a land of death.
I’m alive.
The pain can’t last.
So I’ve removed the cast,
tossed out the sling
and my engagement ring.
I want to move on
past the blood and chrome.
Demeter, it’s spring.
I’m coming home.