Hades, did you choose me?
They said you took me against my will. But darling I knew you watched me from your purple bruised shadows. Did you think I didn’t know? Did you think that I trailed my fingers over my thighs for myself (although, sometimes I did that too)? When I pushed the ivory dress down over my flared hips, imagining I could feel your cool lips at the juncture of my thighs… I knew you watched, gripping the tree until the bark dug into your palms and made them bleed. When I danced in the clearing with flower eidolons, skyclad, loving and lovely, I imagined your grave eyes sparkling down at me. I kissed the petals. They could never be as soft as the lips I imagined. Your somber smile. Your calluses scraping my sensitive skin, the flowers tattooed on my ribs and thighs. My mother wanted to deny my freedom, afraid that I was too young for your wild love. I was born for the reckless.
Hades, did you choose me?
Hades, I loved you long before you touched me. I longed for you long before you saw me. Riding panthers, the fur between my thighs.
I was elated when you burst from the darkness on your chariot of bones and dreams. My shriek was one of elation, not fear or fury. You were so gentle with me. You tiptoed around me in that underworld of black roses and bliss. You barely skimmed your fingers down my cheek, obsidian irises locked on jade ringed with pyrite. I straddled you as you sat on your granite throne and took your mouth, like chocolate cherries. Or pomegranates. Delicious. Delightful. Sinful. Mine. Mine?
Hades, did you choose me?
I ate the seeds. You did not ask me to. I wish you had. I wish you would. I wanted to feel your cool black hair in my fingers. I wanted to wrap my legs around your lean hips and arch into you. I wanted to fuse into one being, gold and tourmaline. I grew daffodils, peonies and sunflowers in your blackened and scourged garden. I watered them with the tears I wept – for you. For us. For what we could be – for what you’d not asked me to be. You called me your sunflower. I wanted to shine for you. To be your sun.
Hades, did you choose me?
My crown of gold and black roses was to be – us. I wore ebony corsets and petticoats to honor you. And still you hesitated. Was I not your Queen? Were you not my King? Perhaps not. It hurt too much. You hurt too much. I loved you… too much.
Hades, did you choose me?
When my mother Demeter swept in to take me back to the world above, the place that I no longer called home, I let her. I kept the crown, and the thought of your long fingers stretched out towards mine as I took to the stars; like you longed for one last touch. But perhaps it was just my pink aureoles, my small breasts, my luscious lips, my thighs of thunder, my moans and gasps and sighs. Perhaps it was only that, for the first time in your life, I’d made you feel like a God. I only wanted to be your goddess. I only wanted to be… yours.
Hades, did you choose me?
And so now I sit in the dappled sunlight, drenched in warmth and buttercups. I grow flowers here – but they turn twisted, dark, and sad. The Centaurs and the Fauns, the minor and major gods, prowl around me – hunger and longing in their gaze. Is it the false flowers and the power of my mother? Is it my love? I doubt it’s that. It never seems to be that.
I keep waiting for you to take me home.
And you never do.
You never come.
I never do.
Hades, will you choose me?
Elisabeth Writing 