Persephone, the flower child of Mount Olympus, a girl created from rainstorms and fruit seeds

The apple of her harvester mother’s eye, Nature’s most beautiful flower

Drawing in men like flies to honey but her mother, the arsenic that kept them all away

And so, there were only bees and butterflies by her side, flowers, and fruit, and clean water

All the quiet anyone could have ever wanted, not another soul to talk to

And Persephone was starving for conversation, an ache that filled her stomach up to her tongue

 

Demeter will tell you her daughter was stolen, taken unwillingly, by a common yet godly thief

Hades was too easy a scapegoat, too sinful to be considered Persephone’s savior

But they will never reveal the whole truth, there will always be pages missing from the storybook,

So much more behind the curtain than an old man playing dress-up for the world

Persephone is no Dorothy, not all the blue and white checked innocence

And Olympus is no Emerald City, no yellow brick road to lead the gods home

 

Hades, though chilled cold by nature of his domain and pale from living under too many shadows

Still has a flesh and blood heart under his brittle bones, still has a pulse jumping through his veins

Despite what they will tell you he still feels alive, and he was lonely, that living king to the long past lived

Lonely for a warm-blooded body beside him, craving for someone to love and be loved by

He wanted to find a sun for his kingdom, wanted a queen by his side to balance out all his dark

He wanted laughter to tear down the lonely drenched walls of his kingdom, to build anew

 

The day Persephone vanished into the Underworld, the world died with her mother

Fields of wheat turned to dust, grapes became raisins, and leaves fell from trees like skydivers

There was no name to this plague of sadness, but when the gods suffer, everyone feels the sting

Demeter scoured the heavens and earth, calling in every favor to find her daughter, her love

But no one even thought of Hades until Olympus had run itself ragged looking for their lost child

When a wind of a word told Demeter that her daughter was beneath her feet she ran

Faster than the wind that warned her, ran faster than Apollo bringing the sun around the horizon and ran

 

And there she was, clothed in a black silk stola, her sunlight soul touching the darkest corners of Hell

A pomegranate sat before her, cleaved in half and missing six seeds, Persephone’s mouth dripping red

Hades’ head adorned with a crown of daisies and dandelions woven by his bride’s magic

But Demeter was blinded by anger, and could not see the joy drifting between the two

All she wanted to keep her crown jewel all to herself, keep her in the light where she could see her

But the Underworld works in strange ways, and Persephone had bound herself there with her hunger

Created a covenant that let her love her husband, forced her mother to let her run away from her arms

 

So Hades and Demeter sat down and bargained over Persephone’s time like it was a piece of land

Cutting her years into six months above ground and six below it, numbered by the seeds she ate

Dividing her love into fractions, her heart into segments, causing pain when she was without the other

All she ever wanted was to love and be loved, to find her missing half

Undo the damage Zeus did when Prometheus give man fire and put herself back together again

But instead she was split further and further apart, love spread thin like water over stones

No way to find all her missing parts, too little time and so much to fix

 

Persephone and Hades’ love story is one of sorrow and love, light and dark, good and bad

But it is still a love story and in the night they can both sleep soundlessly knowing the other is out there

Hands grasping the air next to the empty spaces in the bed next to them

Fitting together like matching puzzle pieces in different boxes

And they are whole