Proserpina creeps

Recently, I tried my hand at my first ever dramatic monologue in response to an open call for pieces about Women in Lockdown. I didn't make the cut (hey, there were over 1000 entries and I've never written a monologue before), but it was a fun exercise and I got a new piece of writing out of it.

I chose to write something inspired by the Ancient Greek myth in which Hades kidnaps the goddess Persephone while she's distracted by a beautiful narcissus flower. Hades spirits Persephone away to the underworld to become his bride. Whilst in hell, Persephone eats a pomegranate seed and so is bound there forever. However, her mother Demeter is not too pleased about the matter and her distress causes all the plants upon the earth to die, pushing the world to the precipice of famine. In the end (and with a little intervention from Zeus), Demeter and Hades strike a deal – Persephone can split her time between walking the earth and being in hell. When Persephone is above ground, the flowers and crops thrive. But when she returns to hell, the earth wilts and dies once more. Hence we experience the seasons and the circle of life, death and renewal. In many tellings of the myth, Persephone is a hapless victim. However, in some retellings, Persephone is in love with Hades... it is from this ambiguity that I chose to write my piece. I also wanted to explore the idea of 'lockdown' as it relates to our connections with others – how we are bound to those we love, and those who love (or, in the case of Persephone, worship) us.

I've shared the piece below as a work in progress. I think I might review its free form and restructure this into more of a poetic verse, but for now here it is in all its rawness ready for re-shaping!

(P.S. Prosperpina is the Roman equivalent of Persephone... I thought it might be fun to play on the duality of identity.)

–

Proserpina creeps

First I was lost to the light,

betrayed by the blinding bright glare of a sun

hanging low in the sky,

belly ripe with the weight of summer stone fruit,

And the sky so unwittingly potent.

Next I was lost to the vine,

seduced by the scent of its peach-plum promise,

locked in a heady embrace

while all about the earth cracked open to receive me,

yet I, so unwittingly potent.

Then I was lost to the land,

duped by the kiss of a rictus grin

upon my lips, that turned to dust

as the ashes of Hades blazed against my nectarine skin.

Such eyes! So witting and potent.

But to whom was I lost,

locked now ‘neath fiery mantle

this father’s possession yielded willingly,

complicit, tossed like a wilted narcissus from his garden?

To him? Surely not.

And the cost to my mother, of I –

so smothered by domesticity

and the sweet burden of familial embrace –

was as a bolder in her belly.

The question of my wit, cold stone, a cyanide pit

naked, now, of its cherry flesh.

Oh, how she howled

the totality of her loss like proof of possession –

for one cannot lose a thing one does not own.

While the softness of my breath,

reined as the roaring hounds who sped my chariot to hell,

was snuffed,

choked to cinders in the thick fog of her affection

lit only by Hekate’s torch.

Yet, who is lost, truly, to a mother’s love?

But rather locked to one’s hearth,

an eternal return.

For while I took my first steps,

plucked a seed from the devil’s garden,

Mother made a deal with that same beast

and the earth wilted under her sorrow.

And in that moment, we were bound together,

the brute and I,

locked in a cyclic embrace,

to swoon like felled oaks

then rise with the first flowers of spring,

again

and again

and again.

So what of you,

who think me snared?

Who bid me stitched into the weft of a winter turned spring.

May I find a voice in you, my infernal valet?

You loose-limbed thing who draws upon my name like nectar,

who binds me in chains

of sorrel

of sapphire,

and on my head a tourmaline crown.

Though all about the handmaids speak their winter hymnal,

a passing elegy,

you sense I do not pull away, my carmine king

but lean into your scarlet affections and ripen,

to see with the clarity of a nascent moon

at twilight,

then creep, crepuscular-like, among your desires

free from the noose of their tales.

A little print based the statue of Isis-Persephone, in the Temple of the Egyptian gods, Gortyn, Crete.