some days, I'm Persephone

I am the daughter that left.
Was I tricked?
Was I lured?

It depends on your interpretation.

But I think that I was led. When the hand of something else, something that would expand my world and take me somewhere new, reached out...

I grabbed on.  Tightly.

And in my excitement. I didn't think it through.
I didn't think there would be so many months when I wouldn't see you.
And many more months when things would change
dramatically
making the months between seem even longer.
Crueler.

Yes, I ate the seeds.
Yes, I know I'm staying here most of the time.
(11 seeds stained my lips.)

I am the lost daughter
who found herself
elsewhere.

I am the grieving daughter
that remembers 
it wasn't always like this.

My mother's screams
and cries
and despair
are softer from where I am now.

And yet...I hear them.
I know the choice I have made.

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