Persephone

They love to tell the story
as if I was a girl
who vanished.

As if I was a wound.
As if I was something stolen
and never returned.

They tell it like I was soft.
Like I was light.
Like I was a thing made only for spring.

But listen carefully.

Seeds do not become flowers
without first learning
how to split open in the dark.

You call it the underworld
like it is something to fear.
I call it a kingdom
that did not ask me to be small.

Down there,
no one asked me to be good.
No one asked me to be sweet.
No one asked me to be anything
other than what I was becoming.

And what I was becoming
was not a maiden.

It was a queen.

Do you know what it is like
to sit on a throne
made of silence and bone
and realise
you are not afraid?

Do you know what it is like
to eat the fruit
and understand
you are no longer visiting
—you belong to yourself now.

They think I return to the surface
because I am allowed to.
Because a deal was made.
Because a mother wept.

But that is not the truth.

I return because I choose to.
I leave because I choose to.
I am not pulled by the arms of men
or the grief of gods.

I am pulled
by the gravity of my own name.

Persephone.
Bringer of death.
Bringer of spring.
Queen of the living.
Queen of the dead.

I am not the girl who was taken.

I am the woman
who learned
that there are worse things
than the underworld.

Like never knowing
your own power.