Ash in my lungs
I inhale the dark
Let it stain my tongue
Carve its bitter mark
They called me maiden
Soft as spring rain
But iron was hiding
Deep in my veins
Thunder on the mountain
My name on his breath
"Come home, little daughter"
Zeus with his scepter of death
White, bright, loud
Power that shouts aloud
Yet even the thunder
Still fears the shroud
Zeus with his empty sky
A king of the open and exposed
Who cannot cross the threshold
Of the House I chose
I met his gaze
Smiled at his threat
I am not Kore anymore
Watch the heavens sweat
They warp and twist
Around what I decree
I am the adamant queen
Say my name—it cuts clean
Persephone
Under all that thunder
His doubt bled through
"I made you, Girl"
I said, "I made me too"
Six red seeds on my tongue
I bite down slow
Deliberate, defiant
Let Olympus know
If the sky won't move
I'll break it in two
If the law won't bend
I'll take it, remake it new
I crown myself
In the dark you feared to see
Let the seasons crack and lurch
Bleed wild and free
---
O hear ye, immortals, and Earth of the boundless domain,
The tale of deep sorrow that rent the divine and the plain.
Demeter weeps, and the world starves in famine's grim thrall,
While mortals weep, their tears feeding the Cocytus' dark call.
Demeter's own sorrow is echoed back eternally there,
In the river's cold depths, where it hangs in the air.
Persephone hears her mother weeping inside the weeping of the dead,
A lament intertwined where the shades have all fled.
The mint-scented lament of her mother enters her lungs and is held,
Like a vow in the shadows, by iron compelled.
She draws a deliberate breath—this one for herself she claims true,
The Cocytus gives it back not as comfort but as strength to pursue.
The endless murmur softens at the edges in recognition's grace,
A hush in the gloom of that underworld place.
The recursive grief is absorbed into her adamant core,
Where resolve hardens firm, unyielding forevermore.
Six months pass beside the silent rivers' flow,
In realms where no seasons or sunlight may go.
Zeus arrives and commands "Kore" to return to the light,
Divine compulsion presses until breath fails and vision dims in the night.
Something within her crystallizes, a spark in the void,
Unbroken by thunder, by fate unalloyed.
She draws breath again, tasting asphodel, narcissus, and the faint metallic sweetness of the Cocytus,
And that same absorbed strength surges, defiant and luminous.
She meets Zeus's gaze unflinchingly, bold as the dawn,
"My name is Persephone. And this is my home."
She eats the six seeds willingly, sealing the bond,
The compromise is forged in the depths beyond.
Truth is entombed, false abduction myth spreads through the lands,
Like whispers of wind over desolate sands.
Demeter's grief becomes seasonal winter, not eternal famine's despair,
A rhythm of chill in the earth's frosted air.
The loop closes: lament no longer multiplies unchecked in its flight,
But is contained, measured, and renewed in the rite
Of the eternal cycle of ascent and descent,
Where darkness and blossom in harmony blend.
---
She walks the fields
Counting seeds instead of hours
Hands in the soil
Like she's searching for her own bones
Smile for the harvest
Eyes on the undergrowth
Chaff in her hair
Heart already heading below
He doesn't change her
He just opens up the seam
Shows her the caverns
She'd been seeing in her dreams
He doesn't take her
He just answers what she keeps
Hades is a mirror
For the goddess of the deep
He doesn't take her
He honors the Host's decree
A stone for her boundary
The basalt for the deep
She laughs at the table
But flinches at endless spring
Tired of bright blessings
That never let anything end
He offers a silence
Where every echo has a name
She sees her reflection
In the rhythm of decay
He offers a Household
Where every shadow finds its place
The Listener waits
While she claims the hearth's flame
Pomegranate stain on her lip
Is that ruin
Or a rite
Is that falling into darkness
Or finally walking toward the night
He doesn't crown her
She already wore that wreath
He only turns her
To the side that lets her breathe