Variations on a Theme of Persephone by winterkate, literature
Literature
Variations on a Theme of Persephone
“Words, words, words.” – Hamlet
i.
All I knew then were ghosts. Her body
an excuse, pale and stripped in the vague
gray-white. Second-hand sheets. The room wet
with winter, the window she could not force
closed. One mosquito, wailing. When she tried
to date, it was Tantalus clawing for a low
vine. It was her mother’s halo. She existed
in what would not die around her. I like you because
you’re a smoker, she said. I bit her lip and sighed
ii.
exhaust. Her body numbered
inside itself what was not
her. She woke here from a Kindly
One’s chemo dream. Edith
Hamilton played my
garden for diamonds,
said P