Persephone
I know what it’s like to be Persephone,
to hide in darkness, afraid to touch it,
to eat sorrows in tiny bits like the bitter
pomegranate seeds she choked down,
hungry with desire for light,
not ready to receive it.
How she had to wait among the dead--
just as I have—absorbing the wisdom
of ancestors, her own skin
while Hades, patient and just,
did not split her open
but waited too, for her to learn
strengths mirror weaknesses,
light and darkness work together
to nourish the soul. Only then
could she become whole,
willing to spend half her days in light,
half in darkness.
Celia Lawren is the author of the poetry chapbook, Among Dead Things, a chronicle of tragedy and resilience, published by Finishing Line Press. She is the winner of the 2021 Poetry Prize awarded by the Knoxville Writers Guild. Her poems have been published in Catamaran, Caesura, Tule Review, She Speaks: An Anthology of Women of Appalachia, 2021-22, and Colossus: Freedom: An Anthology of Voices Across the Carceral Wasteland 2022. Lawren resides in Knoxville, Tennessee after living many years in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I know what it’s like to be Persephone,
to hide in darkness, afraid to touch it,
to eat sorrows in tiny bits like the bitter
pomegranate seeds she choked down,
hungry with desire for light,
not ready to receive it.
How she had to wait among the dead--
just as I have—absorbing the wisdom
of ancestors, her own skin
while Hades, patient and just,
did not split her open
but waited too, for her to learn
strengths mirror weaknesses,
light and darkness work together
to nourish the soul. Only then
could she become whole,
willing to spend half her days in light,
half in darkness.
Celia Lawren is the author of the poetry chapbook, Among Dead Things, a chronicle of tragedy and resilience, published by Finishing Line Press. She is the winner of the 2021 Poetry Prize awarded by the Knoxville Writers Guild. Her poems have been published in Catamaran, Caesura, Tule Review, She Speaks: An Anthology of Women of Appalachia, 2021-22, and Colossus: Freedom: An Anthology of Voices Across the Carceral Wasteland 2022. Lawren resides in Knoxville, Tennessee after living many years in the San Francisco Bay Area.
