Note from the Author: This piece was written for Esoterotica’s Debaucherous Duets in 2017. My first duet with the amazing Shadow Angelina (https://www.facebook.com/shadow.angelina.9), who not only writes fantastically moving poetry, but is also a jaw-dropping photographer. We both bonded over the myth of Persephone and Hades and began to wonder–what if the story written down was not the correct one, but one given in the disbelief that the God of the Dead and the daughter of Demeter could possible find love within each other?
After all, most stories have two sides.
(Italics: Shadow
Bold: Lilith Red
Both: Together)
Dear Mother
I never expected he would be beautiful.
When I first came to him, my arms were filled with lilies,
I smelled of hyacinth and almonds.
He enveloped me with cinnamon and clove and incense smoke.
Do not believe the stories written by men
with dead hearts and passionless eyes
Who needed lies to explain away splendor.
I can tell you why I went,
why I return.
Of home,
and demons,
and rivers
and sapphires interwoven with onyx.
Of how underneath is Elysium.
I can speak for myself.
Blood flows faster than Charon’s ferry on the river Styx
Burning within like Apollo can’t imagine
Turn up the heat
I can turn down purity
Lay down this body,
press seeds to my lips,
leave words of love there for me to chew on later.
I want to remember what it feels like to fall up with you when I descend down to your bed.
I don’t need two coins over the eyes to pay my way.
I will be queen beside his cold throne.
The glow of flesh in his blue-black kingdom
glittering like the diamonds in the walls around me.
Run my fingers along the treasures of the realm, incarcerated in the rock.
I could wander freely among the warped trees heavy with their nocturnal fruit,
Grown from the bravest of souls,
Love left on thorn-pricked gardens that glow their phosphorescence,
Both threaten and caress and sink teeth into flesh.
Six months is a small price to pay, but
Darkness isn’t empty
Not when he’s with me
The way my eyes have adjusted to see
Goes far beyond the physical.
I can describe to you the shape of a soul.
Flame burns blue here–
Deep like the oceans where his brother is a tyrant
Like the sky where his kin live in hypocrisy
Mother, there is truth below
I had once assumed that Terra was the epitome of beauty
But mortal eyes do not know the glory thriving beneath.
His voice was satin.
Raking my nails through his hair and across his skin
Happy to give myself over to the dark within.
I am more comfortable in his bed than I ever was my own
To me, he tasted like the home I sought
I wasn’t a soul to be bought
But an offering, freely given with ecstasy
Three-headed Cerebrus never once snapped at me.
Perhaps he could sense that I, too, yearned to protect the master in his realm
To hide him from judging eyes, wagging tongues
Stay by his side with the pride that he deserved and been denied since damnation.
Mother, I am still here but I have also become someone else now
Will you know my smile and my embrace after this season is over?
He awakened a soul that didn’t know it was wild until I lay underneath,
Praying to every god in existence that it would never end.
The pride when the eyes stopped searching for the daughter–
I became a woman within the looks he cast to me.
I became a monster, beautiful and fierce and unrepentant
I became a Phoenix, my life in ashes…
Never has being dragged to hell felt so close to ascending to heaven.
Never has being kissed felt like dying, I wanted to die all over again
and be resurrected.
Our intensity is its own seduction
I wanted the induction into his court, tell me this body is more than sport.
It is art. It is transcendence.
It is mortal and immortal. Grown from dirt and blood as much as it is from ephemeral magic.
And we indulge in it.
Over. And over.
I begged him to walk with me
Smiling, pleading,
Let me take your hands and keep them in mine
I don’t mind the chill in the skin
Tell me lover of your long life
The short straw you drew that landed you here
Tell me of your jealousy, your anger
The emotions so ugly you shudder with their presence.
Let me smooth the sorrow away with my fingers,
Let me show you that loneliness isn’t eternal
And your soul holds more light than that of your brothers–
Let me show you that you are so much more than someone’s winter.
His clothes were made of loneliness–
So I stripped him naked before a mirror
Showed him how glorious he was
And we tore every bit of that loneliness to tatters
By breathing unsteady into one anothers necks
With eye contact
With yes
Yes.
My body ripe as the fruit above, bursting
And utterly capable of bringing the god of death to his holy knees on velvet ground
They said he was ravenous
Would eat us all alive
Eat. Me. Alive.
He has.
( B r e a t h e )
It happens slowly.
Intentionally.
I am fresh turned earth in his hands,
He is the darkest sun
I never knew what it was to feel so warm
And alive
And vibrant.
Until his shadowy kisses swept my skin
Tasted my spirit
His acceptance at every discovery
No desire to change me…
What is this?
And the ferryman whispered,
“…Love.”
Keep them.
Keep your Ares, your Poseidon and Zeus
Your vengeful, jealous, petty gods
Bloated on lies and devotion
Offerings and stolen moments.
Your war-torn, your selfish gods so high upon a mountain
They are lazy, inconstant children
In the face of this sublime demon
And his full bleeding heart.
I crave an existence tempered with gentleness and whispers in darkness
A cavern of secrets
I’ve the will to coax them from one who has never spoken them to another’s ears.
My heart cradled in my throat
Where I keep his song, so long unsung.
I have written my name, sanguine, my heart’s promise
And who needs the moon when I have our passion to guide me?
I weave my fingers into his hair–I am the flowers he is denied
I am the light against the pitch black of our sky.
The game played by we sacred failures
We lost but hopeful,
Ready, needy and aching–
Destroy me with your confessions.
I will stay fallen
My hands stained with berries and wine
Blood on my mouth from kissing the souls he welcomes to Erebus
I am proud to be Queen of Hell.
He sheds his immortality,
Approaches me as a supplicant
The words surrender and worship emblazoned on his wrists–
I accept.
And when he fills his hands with my hips and thighs
When he makes the holiest of feasts of my shoulder, my breasts, my cunt
When he speaks his prayers into my mouth and the back of my neck
When he offers up everything he is to the magnificence of this body–
I am the chalice
And the burning candle.
I am the most precious authentic.
I am pomegranate gems and dark chocolate dripping on his tongue.
I am his living altar.
I invite him to worship at me nightly.
I am not ashamed.
I am not hiding.
Split me open like ripe fruit.
Drink me down like fine wine.
The succulent meal after which he must lick his fingers
of the taste of me that he worships
As though I became the god in this story.
Starved for touch–denied of warmth
I’ve never been so wanted in my life.
Mother, I was not supposed to love him.
But I do.
I do.
And I have become a home for his heart
I will care for those souls that pass through just as well as he
I will choose him–he will never feel abandoned again.
He is mine.
In our kingdom we are divine.
We are imperfect.
We are love.
I’ve found it so easy to let go-
it has been worth the breathtaking descent.
The retelling of this story is always a lie.
One more piece of our history penned by mortal men.
Spinning this tale with deceit behind their teeth.
Who seek to curry favor with the gods above,
In favor of forsaking the ones below.
Because for the life of them
They can not comprehend-
They can not understand the repercussions of their flagrant dishonesty;
But when they die, they come before me and my king
And we are not happy.
agathokakological 