Persephone

~Elisabeth Wenger Only twelve, and innocent as roses are of the way they load the air with their heady scent: I was playing in fields of the endless summer we had then, though we did not know it was so until after the first awful snow, When, suddenly, a crack, a yawning, and the ground split like an old wound pulled apart at still-tender edges, Death rolled out in his chariot, purple and gold like my favorite crocus. A grabbing, a throwing, sudden violence of unknown hands. Oh I was so cold. Rowed over a frozen river to the icy Palace, and I had to tear off my clothes, Ice-splinters in my fingers, to keep myself warm. Later, I told my mother I was hungry— Child belly-rumblings that yearned for those three Ruby seeds she so mourned. She was my mother, I did not tell her About the three red nights; The first to chain me there, The third to bring me back (a birth, The concept of spring for the first time), But my mother—still wishing me A child in automatic summer—I didn’t tell her.