Persephone

Eve ate the apple,

I ate the pomegranate.

I found my voice - and I claim my right to its darkness.

As is the queen of the underworld, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, the wife to Hades.

I am to be the guide of surviving the darkness.

Welcoming the midnight sky, dancing in the moonlight.

I faced my inner demons, I found the will to thrive.

I won't settle for anything less than.

The crown of thorns that's mine to bare.

I love myself - I reclaim my virginity and purity.

I see my strength, protection and fierceness.

I honor my passion, my mission to offer space in the darkness.

My childhood behind closed doors -

calloused from the flames,

Hardened by the tragedy.

Childhood trauma and abuse.

My mother was the consort and sister to my father.

My father was trusting of my mother to care for me,

That was a woman's role.

His duty to rule with focus and stoicism,

His access and servings of beautiful women on a platter,

His own magic - fierce, strong and powerful.

He blurred the lines of consent, his temper was short and reactive/explosive, and yet I admired him.

Demeter was going to make Zeus proud of their daughter.

The good girl, the maiden picking her mother a bouquet of flowers and the herbs for life.

Spring maiden, never crying, only smiling.

The darkness needed to be hidden as so no admirer could see the ugly, the hideous that was inside me.

Demeter was afraid of it in her own shadow, and she wanted to protect her daughter from it too.

She saw it and felt my strength....

She could tighten her captivity and security of my life at any time. I was to never forget my loyalty to her and the price for my existence that I owed.

She was magic in her own right: goddess of harvest, agriculture, fertility and Earth.

I was ready to die, I was ready to leave this cruel world of my existence.

The drama, the trauma, the isolation.

My mother taught me - Beauty is Pain.

My father taught me - My body was an asset, a product, an object.

He objectified every woman - consciously and subconsciously.

My aunt was married off at 15 years old to his brother,

My father and mother siblings in their own storylines.

Incest runs in our blood.

Sometimes I hate my blood,

The captivity of it. The lies of it. The abuse in it.

Fear lives in my body, numbed by the shock.

I was ready to look death in the face when Hades showed up.