Persephone Rising

The first crack of light blinds me; it’s like fire in my eyes. It’s always this way. First the cool fire across my eyes. Dazzled, pain breaking behind my forehead, my hand goes to my face. Every time, I hide in the dark just a moment longer. Then the last step forward. Still blind but my feet touch the grass, water between my toes, cool mud under the grass squishing upward. I remember this feeling.

The mud was warm the day he took me down, but it’s always cold when I return. Sometimes, this time, there’s snow. Snow! Mother, I would spare you your grief if I could except that it brought this beauty to the earth. Snow! We never had such stuff when I was a girl; the meadow was a constant of soft warm grass and bright flowers.

My vision adjusts and I see the world mother has made in my absence. Now only a tiny crocus glistens in the uncertain light, a dark blotch peeking out against that cold white blanket over the earth. Purple. The color is a memory; in the dim light it looks black, and there’s nothing purple in my winter home, but I remember it. You don’t forget colors, no matter how long you sit in the dark. On bad days, days when it feels like my turn as the Queen of Below will never end, I’ve tried.

I reach for it, half-expecting his arms around my waist again, but the pull doesn’t come. This time, I am allowed to grasp the flower of my own desire. Up close, I can see that blaze of color within the turned-in petals. Purple.

Above, Artemis rides her slender moon across the dark sky. Just a crack in the tapestry of darkness, a smile like my husband’s, cat-like and distant. It pulls my heart down to the earth while my body surges toward the light, arms rising on their own with the freedom to reach up, to be in a place with no ceiling and the sweet light of night.

I come home like this, sneaking in the night, every year. The party will be in a few days, a great celebration when I return to my mother’s house and together we mark the end of winter. Everyone will be there, pinching my cheeks and commenting on how thin I’ve grown. What they mean is “Why do you stay with that man? And when is he going to give you a baby?”

He won’t, and I stay because he’s where I live. I didn’t choose him, but I have, perhaps, grown to love him. I wouldn’t know how to be here anymore, a girl with no responsibilities beyond safeguarding my own innocence. Below, I am a busy woman. I have a place in that world, a job to do. Here, I am free. Nowhere am I home.

There’s no choice to make, I go between the worlds. I preside over spring; I am my mother’s joy and we bring life to this world. I am my husband’s prize and the comforter of the dead.

So I steal these moments, as I was stolen from them. For one silver night, I am a girl again, alone in a meadow, the crescent moon the only witness to my freedom. For one night, the self I keep contained in the needs of others is free, is all I am. It is to this night I return, to this sliver of freedom and solitude between my worlds.

What do you return to? To what can you commit yourself? What sets you free?