I have devoured Persephone, the pomegranates, and death myself. Stolen the myth and carved it open for myself. Ripped it and twisted it and spit it back out until the only thing left is a story about a girl-goddess, and myself. Maybe I’m being too selfish; maybe I’m being too vain. Maybe the myth doesn’t belong to me, maybe Persephone had nothing to do with a girl from a nuclear world about to split in two. I taste pomegranates sweeter than she did; I taste death sweeter than she did. But still, I eat the myth and let it pour down my lungs, crawl inside my stomach, linger in my bones. The taste of Persephone in my mouth, the powerless to empowered, the morals disintegrating upon my lips. Children respect what can eat them; I respect what I can eat. She belongs to me, now. She fell, she was pushed, she climbed down looking for adventure. She fell in love, she fell in faith, she fell in hate. She picked six seeds and shoved them down her throat, she was forced, she was starving. She had a choice, she had no choice, it doesn’t matter, everything matters. She is a story, a painting, a poem. I am real and human and breathing and she lives inside me because I want her to. Because I want to run my fingers into the ribs of her messed-up moralizing mockery of a tale and pull out the intestines and squeeze them until something real bleeds from them. This isn’t a poem about Persephone. She doesn’t exist, and I do, and I ate her. I ate her whole, till Demeter stopped screaming and Hades stopped scheming, and the only thing left is me, and the taste. Me and myself. She exists within me, however I want her to. This myth belongs to me. She chooses the pomegranates now, because I want her to. And so did I.
DECONSTRUCTING PERSEPHONE | M.J. PEARL (via fairytalesques)
