Pomegranate: The Story of Persephone Retold | Chadae Labeach

[content warning: references to abuse]

I ran. I ran until my feet bled and my vision blurred. I ran from my mother's home where love was non-existent but the sharp sting of contact and the scent of blood was constant. My tears mixed with sweat on my mahogany skin. I could feel my whole body working, cold air biting into my lungs and adrenaline coursing through my veins, sending the message to keep going until the danger was gone.

Only the moon hanging low in the stygian sky lit my path to salvation, the night's obscurity heightening my other senses. I could taste my own fear. Hear the frantic beat of my heart echoing each footfall that resounded on the trunks of the tree leaden clearing. I raced through the space, stumbling over tree roots and crushing bugs under my soles. A million questions raced with me. A thousand thoughts competing to get to the finish line. But one thought burned ceaselessly into my mind.

Oh gods she's going to find me.

A flower. So beautiful I could not think of anything but making it mine. It stole my attention. Suddenly for the first time in hours I stopped running, my urgency dwindled and my mind emptied, need replacing all previous thoughts. As I bent over it the scent of Gaia suffocated me, overloading my senses with the richness of the earth. Maybe that's why I didn't realise I was falling until I heard the crack of my own bones against the soft sludge of mud. Oh my gods.

"Where is your coin, woman?" A voice exploded in my ears, a voice connected to a rust-coloured older man. One who I knew all too much about. Charon.

My voice forbade me to answer and only the softest grunt came out in response. "Oh...Oh no, you are not supposed to be here." That was the last thing I heard before the world faded away and I was sent to the closest realm of death available to me.

I often dreamed of death. On the nights where my mother's insults swarmed my mind and fresh bruises stung, golden ichor rising to the surface. I dreamt of meeting the Lord of the Underworld the way mortals do. For the life to leave my body, to give into the darkness, to simply stop existing. I was only alive enough to have strength to die, but I could not die. It was yet another curse of my parentage. So, when I awoke to see pale grey eyes gazing down at me, the unease behind them palpable, I knew I was looking into the eyes of a man that I had dreamt about for centuries.

You mortals have done him and I the greatest injustice. You have taken our story and turned it into unrecognisable myth, my mother the hero and my saviour the villain when it is just the opposite. Truthfully, I saved myself. You have made my story one of abuse and it is, but you have given the title of abuser to the wrong god.

In my mother's home feelings were not allowed. Tears were banned and love was foreign. To my mother I was her curse, which gave her the right to scar me in every way. Her words etched into my mind and the shape of her fist imprinted on my body. My life was the consequence of my father's actions, for I was the product of the most gruesome act. The anger and resentment towards her that stay alight in my heart have lessened over the centuries, but every time I hear an ignorant mortal talk of my loving mother that does not exist, the fire of my hatred is rekindled.

One part the myths did get right is that I received a lot of attention from other gods. They omitted, however, that the attention was almost never good. Guess what Demeter did? She let it happen. She let the filthy comments go unpunished. She let hands drift and fingers wander. She dressed me to appeal to the sick ideal of Olympians. She let Zeus...she authorised my suffering. For Olympus' sake she even named me kore! She did not love me. She did not know what love was. All she did was hurt me in every way possible, yet she gets to be known as the hero of this story.

Not anymore. I am telling my story and you are going to listen.

For a very long time I felt like an automaton, a machine without feelings, like one of Hephaestus' creations. I had to learn how to love and each and every day I thank the fates that I was able to do that with the Lord of the Underworld. He taught me that there is nothing wrong with me. He is the one who taught me about my mother's ailment. My mother is a narcissist, that is something I can now say with confidence. The constant venom she spat at me was due to her own mental state. I did not deserve it. Yet so, I mourn the tears lost over her. The pillow soaking up the sobs that racked my body after every altercation. I grieve for the child whose cheeks were more often wet than pulled up in a smile.

But I rejoice in the knowledge that it was not my fault. The well of my emotions ran dry and the tears just wouldn't come anymore. So, I ran. I ran and stumbled upon death.