this is the worst I can do

Persy | they/them | old enough to have watched films on VHS | slav

[store-brand-persephone]

'A Minotaur' Persephone

[store-brand-persephone]

[text ID:

‘A Minotaur'

My mother cut my hair the other day. It reached my tailbone before, now it’s up to my shoulder blades. I’m not a girl. I’m not not a girl, but there are different things I’d rather be, lavender and violent.

In my fantasies I’m the monster. Sparkling like champagne, with rosy cheeks, still so very powder pink, with teeth like an old dog, skin speckled with pale scars. And I welcome you into my maze.

This is my body, like an unclaimed country, like an overgrown wasteland. This is my mind, bedridden. This is numbness in my lower back at twenty-five. This is how far I could stretch myself to be perfect. I feel the heat in my shoulder from where she brought down her loving hand to smite me.

Let me close the door behind me. Don’t send in messengers. But she won’t let me starve.

end ID/]

[store-brand-persephone]

'Weighted', Persy

[store-brand-persephone]

'Living lividity', Persy

[store-brand-persephone]

[text ID: ‘Living lividity'

Squares and rectangles. No dead thing is alive, but to be alive is to be already dead. That’s what the mushrooms tell me when I fry them, egg yolk, egg white and breadcrumbs. Doesn’t it comfort you, they ask as I eat them. Your flesh and bone will return where it belongs, but for now, the dead are walking, but for now there is the machinery. Look, it’s so glorious,

this interlude

when we exchange our death between us to learn about the light. It’s a miracle, a scream in silence, ripples on the water. In this vastness, that’s the only thing worth everything, to eat your troubles, to kiss the electrified structure of your friend’s body goodnight.

See, the tree that’ll make a coffin for you is growing in the darkness of the first winter night. It’s cold, but touched by our spindly fingers, and yours, across time, across the road from where the spark in the ignition of a car that someone you love drives caught you on fire. The things you desire might still find you. The wheels are turning, something is burning and your death is here, in your stomach, in your heart, in your entire bloodline, vibrating with a kick into action. Give in. Take that respite from indifference. As long as you know what shape to call your grave.

/end ID]

[store-brand-persephone]

'Living lividity', Persy

[store-brand-persephone]

There are feathers, grey and white, dragged across the whole garden, but there is no blood, no murdered pigeon anywhere. Maybe whatever got it ate it, but it's so peculiar, it feels like some angel went down and the feathers are what's left when it took off again, they feel like a strange miracle. I cannot write a poem about that.

[store-brand-persephone]

'The Moon' or 2AM post-miracle clarity - Persy

[store-brand-persephone]

[text ID:

Desperation seeps to the surface like tar

The moon tastes like a chocolate mint pastille as it rises over the pines

So I cut it really thinly to last me through the dry spell

Once and twice and thrice and

This is forever

I stuck the knife into the middle of the blue hour and scream

I don’t get my money’s worth in here

In my dreams I see the light

Things like this happen once and never again

Things like that happen to better people

It’s like winning a lottery

It’s like getting pushed off a cliff

Like getting buried at crossroads

You extend a shaking hand, a clairvoyant for the season, and whisper

This is not forever

I want to spit into the mouth of the exception

The stars do align if you live in the neighbourhood

Still lucky, still brilliant, still full of oil, alcohol and pigment

But can I dig myself out

I won’t ever forget the sound of distant dog barking in a cricket-filled night

In this purgatorial state, the backyard I grew up in

The hole I can’t crawl out of

I burn in these streets, but the wet cigarette of a hometown doesn’t catch on

Things like this happen once and never again

I dare you to cheer for the underdog

It’s like getting revenge

It’s like getting fired

Like sinking to their level

Raise me from the dead if you can, open your mouth, I love you

God, how I love you

The moon tastes like a white chocolate-coated blueberry jaffa cake

Dainty wrists and brutish hands to wrap around your waist

I am nauseous with hunger

And if this is all there is

I still want a hundred graves far away from here

The body parts of a saint in all the secret churches across the land

/end ID]

[store-brand-persephone]

'Covenant Thursday' fragment

by Persephone

[store-brand-persephone]

'The Moon' or 2AM post-miracle clarity - Persy

[store-brand-persephone]

Re: angels, Persy

inspired by Do Angels Exist? A Google Search a Week off Antipsychotics, Dante Émile

[store-brand-persephone]

[text ID:

To: il sommo poeta

Re: angels

In the centre of a parking lot, in the middle of a cobblestone square, casted in the hazy glow of cloud-embraced sun, statuesque, I am me and I am a kid frozen in time, watching a herd of pigeons. They flap their fans, christened as sky rats these days, they bred dove-hood out of themselves. And in the silence before the storm an angel passes me with the smell of petrichor, fed on bread, with sickly ruffled feathers. Will I get ill if I touch it, mother? Please, will it’s disease transfer?

The picture books show me angels with flat chests and long hair like glam rockers, muscular arms, doe eyes, rose-coloured lips and soft fingers. The catechist frowns at my unspoken question. ‘No, they are pure.’ I know, that’s not the answer. There is no consensus on how to paint Gabriel. Or was it Gabrielle? They refuse to say.

‘Are the angels ringed or do they peck at the bands and bleed?’ I ask. The seraphim at the party laugh through the cigarette smoke. ‘Don’t tell dad. We made our halos into this.’ They show me their ears and noses, pierced full of silver and gold. One winks with three out of seven of his gem-like eyes to a goth man in the corner. One lets down the labyrinth of auburn locks for someone to get lost in. Lucy has a star-shaped tattoo on their back. ‘It didn’t hurt at much as you’ll think', they confess. ‘Less than a face slap.’

The angels shake like birch-trees next to a bus stop. They fly through the high voltage lines and perch on wires. Green and yellow down sticks to the wet pavement and I imagine the wings fold and unfold, cosmic origami above their heads as they hold hands in the pockets of each others coats. They sneak back home with cold feet. I pick up a lost button that looks like a pebble, but is not a pebble, weight it in my palm and it’s heavy when it levitates. Glory is the warmth it emanates after being held.

Sometimes I feel like we’re the favourite child. Can I give my soul to my cherub sibling when I no longer use it? Is it stupid I would share it with no hesitation? Would God make patches where it started to tear and make it all pretty if I requested? Would the angel want it?

A lightbulb over my bed is buzzing. Is there anyone assigned to my case? I don’t want to be alone and I’m not sure I know what to do with divinity pacing around the room, so maybe that bird could sit, I can even make tea and bake an aptly named cake. It’s ok.

There are songs just for the occasion too, if the heavenly choirs join, I have karaoke versions, maybe Queen to set the mood, then we can move to Joy Division? And Fleetwood Mac, a bit of blue notes is good for the spirit.

Let the music take you, angels. Let the lullabies carry on. May your dreams shimmer in the good night.

Yours sincerely,

belacqua

/end ID]

[store-brand-persephone]

Re: angels, Persy

inspired by Do Angels Exist? A Google Search a Week off Antipsychotics, Dante Émile

[store-brand-persephone]

'Covenant Thursday' fragment

by Persephone

[store-brand-persephone]

'A Minotaur' Persephone

[store-brand-persephone]

'The Green Man' Persephone

[store-brand-persephone]

[text ID: His lips tasted like water from a fresh spring, teeth-shattering cold, delicious, life-giving. He was dead and he stood there like a goat tied with a piece of rough rope to a post next to the wood-chopping block. Is a deed executed in the middle of a forest grove if there is no body to witness?

He still smelled un-ripe, green as I leaned in, like wind breathing from the moors. It was carrying a hint of rosemary and lemon balm growing by witches’ garden walls, like his Saint Mary carries pale roses and a basket of citrons.

Forgive me, my boy, it’s a snowless winter, nothing pure to hide the rotting things under and my thoughts, they belong with the corpses of flowers. I am carmine to your vivid carrion. It might be a fairytale and divine revelation as two sides of one coin that my horse is white, whiter that bones.

His eyelashes would be nicest in spring, I thought, but if he can stay opened that long is not certain. My bloodied hand found rest on his cheek and I’m more hungry than ever.

I promise to give you everything you’d dare to take. So tell me do you want to be a saint, or do you want to be worshipped? Do you need to be perfect, or do you need to be swallowed? There is a difference, but by my table I can still serve you. Is it really that scary and does it disgust you that I might know you? /end ID]

[store-brand-persephone]

'The Green Man' Persephone

[store-brand-persephone]

'I cook pasta for you' Persephone

[store-brand-persephone]

[ID: I cook pasta for you

I tell everyone it’s because I can do it better

Your hunger is a parasitic demon you once nursed like a white dove on your own blood

and I’m glad you let me kill it

every once in a while.

So we eat and we smoke after dinner when the fire in you consumes me

you

the apartment

I hold your hands in mine together

hoping it’s enough to make this burnt offering a prayer

you laugh and press your lips to mine in gratitude

One of us must be a God

I have a growing suspicion it’s not me /end ID]

[store-brand-persephone]

'I cook pasta for you' Persephone

[store-brand-persephone]

'Sometimes' Persephone

[store-brand-persephone]

[ID: Sometimes I daydream about choice being cut out of me and served as a supper on a silver platter. Then grief could be easy and sweet. I could chew on it without constantly feeling fresh blood in my mouth and let my stomach be filled with something in the shape of dark heavy nauseating comfort.

The wine in my glass turns from red to translucent white.

Sometimes I think that love is a haunted house that doesn’t let you leave and I rattle my chains screaming, ‘Don’t make me sick, don’t make me sick!’, but I do grow ill. A little drowned, a little strangled. Stuck between the walls. My hair is strewn around on the floor of every room, entangled into the fabric of the carpets and pillow covers and the tablecloth embroidered with sunflowers.

I want to wear a long pale dress. I want to know if I could see the woods behind the house again.

I want to be seen. I want to be seen.

I want to know where my milk teeth are kept these days.

The tree pushed the jaw bone of the buried dog out of the earth and into the light in a mockery of birth.

I should have been fed what was left after I emerged.

Sometimes I see my white translucent skin in the mirror and think about lack of iron and calcium and ghastly properties of limestone. A house is a person is a bone is an apparition. Building is putting some meat on. Building is not a lovely sight.

‘Feed yourself well, but carry the grief,’ says mother deer as she stares at me with one eye from the depth of the woods, ‘your hair grows like flowers every summer.’

The wine in my glass turns back to red. Redder. Reddest. /end ID]