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The myth goes that I was stolen, that Hades grabbed me when my mother’s back was turned and he dragged me down in to the darkness. The story goes that I am only happy when I return to my mother, and in turn I make her so happy she gives the gift of summer to mortals once more.
It is said that Hades rapes me.
The myth is wrong.
~
It is warm, it is always warm because this is before and my mother is always happy, always gifting the mortals with spring and summer and a bountiful harvest. I walk behind her, I always walk behind her, nothing more than a nymph, sprinkling a few flowers here and there and smiling as my mother walks in fucking beauty.
She wanted me to marry a mortal, she wanted me to give her a connection to them that would be damn hard to sever. He was a swineherd, dear Zeus, he talked about nothing but swine.
Talked about how his flock was getting big enough to support a wife, how it was nearly big enough to support a family.
I will admit it willingly- I snapped. I smiled on the outside and said excuse me and opened the door and walked out. I saw a gap in the earth, and I jumped. I was not pulled. I jumped, meaning to seek out my way to Hades and his domain but it was a shorter jump than I imagined.
I landed in his lap, and he looked at me, looked right through me, and drug me down, down, down.
~
He took me into the dark and did even darker things to me.
I did not just like them.
I loved them.
~
He made me dirtier than my mother’s mud and when I met the gardener tending the fruit of the dead, sore and sour and happier than I had been in my life, he told me to run.
Told me to get back to my mother, like the good little girl I was.
Told me not to eat the food of the dead, because it would bind me down, tie me down into Hades.
I held out my hand, and demanded he give me the fucking seeds.
~
I heard my mother wail and spit half of them out.
~
I still see the shepherd in the summer, and he tells me of his flock, but he sees the marks from the chains on my wrists and where the whip hit just a bit too hard, and his smile wavers.
I smile brighter when he notices.
~
In the winter I return to him, and I sit on his throne with him, and he commands the dead while I whisper things in his ear.
In the dark of the night we take turns being strapped to a bed, and the whip is made of leather and I do not ask what kind.
~
I love him and he loves me and in that love is my freedom, and my salvation.
~
My name is Persephone and the truth is I did not fall, I jumped.