PERSEPHONE

One day I end up wandering into the wilder ends of the fields where the grass grow longer and small trees sprout from the surface. The path grew trackless. Persephone leaves reason behind and traverses the darkening landscape, where trees grow taller and thicker, where the ground is more uneven and soft, unsteady and broken, broken apart at some places hidden stones revealed themselves beneath the soft yielding soil of the barren moist ground. Soon stone and pebbles turned into clusters, small paved sections of what could have been a stone road. Soon life about her grew wayward, heat arose and descended and flew about with the remnants of the cool northerly wind. A hue of purple and blue felt its way about the swollen sky and Persephone found herself enchanted and watchful. As she walked onwards, yielding to her urgency in her spirit, the sound of a soft gait let her know, she had company. They walked together for some time, feet stepping in syncronisity. Her eyes flitted about over the towering shadows that leapt and dove into the stones along the road. There were a few tall trees, white birch, where light could play and bounce off and pierce the dark and silent corners of the place.

I encounter Pomegranates in a room of clustered folks. My companion has shown me the arrangement of the stars, such I’d only seen as lights, now I knew to call them stars, the Pleiades, Ursa Major. And more names, of trees, of smells like lavender and honey, and their origins in the earth, and the homes of the bees. The colours, colours which until now had been but interesting visuals, a miracle to the eye that I relished in speechlessness filling me with awe. Red, I learned after blue for the sky and grey for the stones. But red I liked most and my attention often tarried upon such colours. Strawberries, wine, roses, and blood,  all captivated me. After smells and colours, sensations drove me on.

The pomegranate lay lazily upon a carved-out wooden chair among some older folks, faced hidden behind large curtains that cast shadows about them.

The structure of words, the way sentences work, I would conjure the names with my knowledge. There it was, my companion was silent and then spoke as though to assist, but I knew what to call it, looking for the root, granate …pom. My companion was silent, motionless smiling a little their curly hair crowding about their head and neck, motionless.

I plucked a small seed, touching the soft wet groove and lifted the seed out. A colour almost like those apples, yet this seed glowed, the pink emanating about a white speck in the centre. A smell so subtly sweet it tantalized even more. I placed the seed of the pomegranate on my tongue . I looked to my companion. They gazed with blue grey eyes, the first two colours I had learned.

It remained whole, solid, firm in my mouth. I took a bite into it allowing sweet juices to meld around in on my tongue, between my teeth, down my throat. I ate all the seeds, cheeks rosy and my spirit brimming and glowing.

Walking into a courtyard I heard the sound of my companion’s footsteps grow slower, and growing slower still. Thick pauses filling the gap between each step. Had something pulled them back, weighed them down, or was I walking faster, I could not tell. Leaves began to fold out from trees again, clustered now and the terrain flattened into dry soil, powdery and sun-dried. The sun hung fastened among a sky of thick flat blue. Grass emerged short and curtailed into arrangements, little daisies bobbing their heads in dizzy repetition.

Buildings emerged like thick white fillings of frosting on a wedding cake, the tilled land, with paved routes. Civilisation. There was where I lived.

I walked into a wild old house into the first room after the entrance was wide and weightless as I entered. There were clusters of relations buzzing sounds of private intimate conversation circulating the room.

“agh !” I call out. A silence coated the air, halting all noise in its tracks. Voices collapsed and motionlessness moved about the room.

No one recognized me, quietened, stunned, unnerved by what I had uttered people began to react, some recoiled back into the containment of their past movement in fatalistic repetition. Others yelled, wept, frantically questioned attempting to turn back the moment, and wind life back in some way. For now they thought they knew, and it would be terrible after the joy that had just been pronounced.

 And thus Persephone returned the weight of knowledge, an indelible line forming about her body.