The Closed Doors

by Pauline Albanese

“Not far from the walls of Enna, there is a deep pool. A wood encircles the waters, surrounds them on everyside, and its leaves act as a veil, dispelling Phoebus’s shafts. The branches give it coolness, and the moist soil, Tyrian purple flowers: there, it is everlasting Spring. While Persephone was playing in this glade, and gathering violets or radiant lilies, while with girlish fondness she filled the folds of her gown, and her basket, trying to outdo her companions in her picking, Hades, almost in a moment, saw her, prized her, took her: so swift as this, is love.” —Ovid, Metamorphoses (tr. by A. S. Kline)

drowsy tepidity of moonless nights,

Did I sell my happiness and my innocence for a few pomegranates seeds? Pomegranates were so few where I come from. In her hands she cups one of them, from the crystal bowl; she sinks her teeth in its purple flesh. Juice runs on her slight wrists, her shivering chin; she licks her mouth. She waters it down with wine, a whole glassful. She’s dark and red.

I know nothingness as you know light, flower daughter.

Crimson moves me. Crimson makes my heart beat like a adolescent’s; the red of liquor, of muscle, of wounds—of your mouth and your cheeks just before you pound at those closed doors you can’t escape.

I love the throne made of bones and sinews that carries without flinching the weight of my fears.

Can you hear the screams when darkness is velvet? Can you hear the wheel turning and the song of the scavengers? But it is poetry, you know —poetry comes from the guts and is spat out in a cry.

PERSEPHONE Liar. Poetry is morning dew and wind between my knuckles. HADES No. It’s a kiss full of teeth, and a metallic taste on your tongue, the pain under the stomach, there, just there, where you hide your fear and your power.

Each one of my ribs—I will open each one of my ribs with fingertips, break each one of my ribs, and allow you to dive your hands into my chest so you can feel the beating of my heart. I will show you that life isn’t always warm, isn’t always veiled in dusk and emerald.

Mother, I missed the incandescent nights. Did you wait for me?

You came to me. PERSEPHONE I didn’t want to. HADES, hushed, tranquil Don’t lie to me. It’s not a command. Maybe he’s only hoping. PERSEPHONE I didn’t know. HADES I chose you because you’re an orchard of ripe fruits, and I want to lay my sufferings in the shadows of your arms, of your belly. I chose you because your tears remind me of September rain. Because of the sun I see in your pupils. You cannot run now, can you? You have found your home. Do you feel the darkness in the hollow of your plexus? Don’t you understand? Your darkness was your secret, and she whispers to mine.

Will they come, really? Will they cross the river, a horde, a pack, with torches and insults and threats and weapons? Will they bare their teeth to their brother, the lonely brother, the monster from Hell? They left me on the other side of the riverbank. They left me here in a world of ashes and graves and moans. The leitmotiv of Fate became my music, and the beauty of dark eye-socket my art, and love became grief. Won’t they allow me rest, won’t they allow me this sole respite?

I alone, I Death, am unavoidable. I alone am almighty. Not love. Not Spring. Not light. The world is here. The origins of the world. The end of the world. The heart of the circle. They can’t understand that they rule over an instant and I rule over forever.

Yesterday, he took me by the hand so he could show me his world. I felt under my skin the shivers of his metacarpus, the mechanism of his knuckles, the soft rattle of his wrist. I harmonised my step with his pulse and walked to the beat of his survival.

Everything is over. But it’s alright: dust glints like diamonds and silence tastes like fresh dew. It’s cold as early morning.

I am weak, I cry salt, and my eyes are abyssal; you are weak, you cry salt, and your eyes are darkness; you, and me, and them, and the world is terribly human, terribly monotonous. I will never bring to you the beauty of June fields, the smell of ripe apricots and wild berries. I will not be able to exhale the friskiness of the mountain stream on your tongue. I cannot give you the world above, I cannot light up the shadows. I don’t want to be the only receptacle of life in the midst of death. I am rotting like the others, you know.

You are lying to yourself if you think I will vanquish your melancholy.

I am alone here, you know. I feel like a thousand years. I read in you as if you had welcomed me inside of your skin.

HADES, inhaling sharply Persephone. The word feels like poetry and hangs between them for a second. She looks at him and waits. HADES, voice soft Do not ask me to beg. She is still, between him and the open door. HADES Tell them that you weren’t hungry, tell them you followed the pomegranates seeds because they tasted like blood, like love. A silence. HADES That you wanted to escape your body and the light because darkness held you by the belly and by the heart. A silence. HADES, whispering now Tell them you chose to come.

PERSEPHONE I will tell them I came for me and stayed for you.