Hades and Persephone
- Feb 5, 2015
- 2 min read
“What do you miss?”
“That’s easy: light.”
“I should’ve known you’d say that. But light overexposes. It leaves all the other senses dim. Take my hand, for instance. In the light, you might not even feel it.”
“Sounds great. Then your palms could go on and haunt some other skin.”
“Your heart couldn’t take that.”
“You’re wrong. You’re always forgetting this was a contract. There’s no fitting love into that.”
“I’m not talking about love.”
“What then?”
“Jealousy. If I found someone else—another girl from the woods, let’s say—the light you claim to crave would be an instant prison. You’d be pounding on the ground and ripping through roots of trees just to find me again.”
“Your ego is unbelievable, even for a god.”
“You say that now. And I’m sure you truly think you are above your most primal emotion—envy—but think again. Think of my hands touching virgin flesh, giving her all these pieces of night. Tell me it doesn’t make you sick. Tell me you don’t need the darkness to feel okay about needing me.”
“You think I need you? You think I—Okay. Let me tell you what I want. A warm bath for starters, with salts that smell like peonies. Fingers that don’t feel like frozen pipes. A little love, maybe. And a 24-ounce Long Island Iced Tea.”
“I knew it. The thought of being without me is already driving you to drink.”
“Oh, you’re right about that. What’s the fun of a celebration if you can’t make a toast? A toast to sitting in traffic, or buying a roll of stamps. A toast to sunburns. A toast to light, to—”
“Ah, clever girl. You’re always good for a little laugh now and then. But try letting the light seduce. Try telling it to wind around your body and forgive your flaws. See if the light can illuminate a sound the way the darkness can. Try telling the light to do this—”
“Do what?”
“Make a mystery of the air.”
“Hades? Where’d you go? Hades?”
Megan Collins received an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, where she was a teaching fellow. She currently teaches creative writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, as well as literature at Central Connecticut State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Linebreak, Blast Furnace, Tinderbox, Hartskill Review, and Toad.
Photo Credit - mythologian.net
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