Don't fall in love like
Proserpina fell for Pluto. She
Was too young, she forgot
What love was.
You think Jupiter knows
Love?
Maybe he does. But
He's just doing his job
Making rules and
Fucking girls shaped like swans
While Juno pretends
Not to know.
Between you and I, he doesn't
Know what he's doing, he's
Still figuring this god-thing out.
Sometimes it takes quite a while
To figure out who you are. Sometimes
It takes changing your name,
Sometimes it takes
Centuries.
Ceres cries in a field full of clovers
Summer gloves lay
Discarded
At her side. When winter comes, she'll
Clutch dandelions to her breast
Instead of a daughter.
Jupiter cut the year in half for
Ceres
Fair and square, he says.
Ceres says no. Do you
Remember? Once, there was
Eternal summer.
Each day was a Wednesday,
Stretching on with no sight of either end,
Sun like orange velvet
Wrapping 'round our shoulders-
Summer gloved hands
And
The dandelions were yellow.
Fair and square, my flowery ass,
Says Ceres.
We owed Pluto nothing
Before he took it.
Proserpina is too young to
Remember love. She forgot
That love doesn't take
Without asking. Love
Doesn't set out pomegranate blossoms
To charm a girl he knows
Could never resist red flowers.
Ceres wishes her daughter
Had not so loved flowers.
Now Pluto is still hungry, he
Waits while
Proserpina waltzes into her
Mother's home.
Rose petals from last summer
Cascade, half-wilted,
From her brow.
Words about true love
Trip from her teeth, but
Her toes are like snow and
Her palms have stopped smelling
Like flowers. Proserpina,
You don't know what love is,
Says Ceres, love wouldn't
Make your cheekbones sharp and
Turn your ribs
Into teeth.
But Proserpina scoffs, she says
You fucked Jupiter, what
Do you know about
Love.
Proserpina turns
On one pearl-and-ruby heel
And doesn't listen. She cares not
What her mother knows
About love.
Ceres says, I know you.
Winter comes.
Ceres holds dandelion stems
To her heart
Instead of a daughter.
Proserpina sleeps in onyx and sapphire sheets
Sometimes Pluto kisses her
To harvest the roses
From her lips, when he forgets
What summer feels like.
He sits in emerald halls
And feeds Proserpina
Pomegranates.
She wasn't made to live off of
Winter fruit.
But he forgets, and
When her feet are numb
She trips over herself
And her ribs-turned-to-teeth
Draw garnet drops from her
Belly.
He likes how the drops
Remind him
Of pomegranates.
