In Communion with Calliope is a weekly poetry column by Ivana Devcic.
Oh, muse, settle down beside me
while I recount: My mother,
Demeter, the goddess of agriculture,
of the harvest;
the timeless martyr,
closeted me,
tried to bury my will
with her changing moods,
between her changing seasons.
She named me a goddess of Spring,
so that I might always be her subordinate,
so that she could always remind me
I only existed because of her,
because of all her sacrifices.
I forgot her cries of,
“I have given all I could have had for you.”
“Gaze upon all I have done for you,”
she would whine.
Without choice,
without agency,
sequestered
and pushed
and pulled,
I forgot –
I forgot how I ran to the pool,
begging for an end,
looking for an escape,
my tears mixing in the water
– a mirror, for the first time
reflecting my true flesh,
shattering and splitting and hatching.
Weary right to my very bones,
I wanted to rest eternally.
But, then he heard me.
I forgot –
I forgot how he erupted from below,
from the belly of the earth,
the darkness spouting out like sunlight.
I forgot how he took my hand,
held me like an answer to his prayers
(even though it was he who answered mine).
I forgot that he knelt before me,
in servitude,
as everything that I never knew I wanted.
I forgot that he offered me a dominion,
the Queenship of the Underworld,
with him.
I forgot that I
was his mate,
his equal,
and his deliverance.
I forgot that I devoured the Pomegranate,
how I let the blood trickle down my chin,
and with rabid eyes,
I assumed my epithets:
The Bringer of Death…
… and of Light –
I forgot that only Spring
could rebirth.
For what are Life and Death,
but two halves of a whole?