Persephone

July 14, 2025

Held Captive in Your Heart

Caressing the peacock feather of my pen

Takes my mind back to the beginning

An eternal life spent in-between:

The spring-bringer and

Queen of the damned

A paradox so beautiful yet agonizing

Is anyone really built for this?

One moment you are experiencing the highs of girlhood

Another moment you are transforming into the greatest mystery

Oh, my love

Hauntingly, achingly charming

He is everything that is wrong with everything

Not to me

Never to me

When he walks in, he instills fear

That is because he is fear

 

I feared him at first, too

On his obsidian throne

He looked ever-so-imposing

Serpents slithered on him all around

Yet when he touched me

His hands were always a pleasant type of warm

You would never believe that in the land of dead

The king of them all

Would hold you like you could easily break

He always knew deep down

That I made my mind biting into that pomegranate

He smiled at my savage image

Red liquid dripping down my mouth

His first encounter with the ‘other me’

I don’t want to keep leaving anymore

I am too far gone

My eyes are too sensitive to sunlight now

My ears are blocked from being down under

I can no longer hear my mother’s cries

Do I hold onto who I once was?

Seeing his silhouette walking towards me now

With lost shadows trailing behind him in the hallways

As I lay on black silk in our marriage bed

 

Too far gone, I repeat in my head

 

Daphodile is a sociology and political science student and full-time overthinker. Lover of things beautiful and macabre, tragic and funny. This poem is a part of an ongoing poetry series about giving voice to the misunderstood and misused women of Greek mythology.

 

Featured image by Tamanna Rumee on Unsplash.

SHARE THIS STORY
COMMENTS
ADD A COMMENT