Seasons of Persephone

A Short Story

Inspired by the goddess of springtime. Dedicated to the women whose art so continuously inspires me to reach beyond myself.

Snow fell in the morning hours as if dressing the branches in their newly grown gowns, crowning them all in ivory and lilac. Winter stroked its white hand on the blushing cheek of springtime—though by midafternoon the earth’s blood surged warm again, and the wind wasn’t scolding but soothed. With the chrysanthemum sun beginning its descent, I returned to the bar of Persephone, venturing out like a harvester to gather seeds for some future narrative—given I encountered more than the usual cries for affection (whether vocal or silent) followed by cheers of more libations for everybody! Perhaps tonight, I thought, will see me recapture the rhythm of my fickle muse, always changing shape as it did—as if it slept in the winding currents of the heady night air. As if the tinkling of ice on glass masked the ringing of cathedral bells and the bubble-bright songs which popped between strangers somehow disguised the notes of a master’s opus wafting under a golden ceiling.

The bar in question, a gem of a joint called The Maiden’s Gin Bar and Jazz Lounge, squeezed itself between a grainy record store that never managed to be open when you actually stopped by and Razzle Dazzled which sold second-rate amulets with the hours taped up on a hand-scrawled piece of Xerox paper. Across the street yawned the vacant lot of a Presbyterian church, at one time doubling as a farmer’s market, back before my Nan moved down south, and we used to walk down for fresh cucumbers or strawberries or golden yellow apples. But all that’s faded in the dusk of the last twenty years or so. The district as a whole in fact, once the scrappy, neon heart of the local crowd, beat a lot less neon and a lot more scrappy—unless you hazed out your vision just so as you walked—then you might be able to conjure up those glittering ghosts of nightlife past.

Maiden’s itself had a singular little neon sign with the letters glowing in green cursive and a neon martini glass tipping back and forth, though half the time it was never on, and with the windows faintly tinted in that dusty shade of forgotten bronze, the only guaranteed tip to its entrance was the wisp of scratchy jazz, localized with stereos to the shadows of its doorway. But that night the sign was blinking, and I slipped inside with my usual air of apathetic curiosity.

The scene within, hardly brighter than the night without, swallowed me in dark blue shadows before the halos of golden-brown candelabras, strung from a ceiling of ornate tile, lit a path to the bar top and tables. An imprint of exotic florals snaked across the far, burnt-umber walls, while those nearer the bar yawned the color of dark emeralds. Dusty mirrors glinted in tarnished frames, hung at angles that never could catch your reflection. In one corner, an array of 1920s knock-off furniture, complete with cream-colored cushions, once white perhaps, made for a hollow sort of parlor. In another, a lone microphone stand and the space where a piano might once have sat. I pictured a woman in a narrow, black-jeweled dress that puddled at the floor and a shadowy man in a pinstripe vest filling the air of the past with smoky, seductive jazz. Its echoes followed me to the bar top, adorned at intervals with a series of delicate, mismatching lamps, the stands or shades of which furled like flower petals or stems. Above the consecutive rows of bottles, amber fire glowing in florescent moonlight, strands of ivy and other vines crept down between the shelves. How they managed to thrive from a place of such inconsistent sunlight remained a mystery, but the space as a whole carried a sense of things that sprouted in the dark. The pooling shadows might lend a grainy texture to the bar’s bygone luster, but it held a spirit of botanical power, the feeling that green arms were reaching, incrementally, to twist around the lost and lonely souls and return them to a more rooted, harmonizing earth. But this was all the fault of my unshakeable romanticism, seeking to elevate another evening of drinking alone, haunted by shadows of the indelible present, sitting among strangers spellbound by their own conversation and not the least bit concerned with achieving some state of harmony—save that which the gin might bring them.

After hoisting myself on a stool at the far end, I succinctly gave my order, which was just as succinctly poured. The early night hours had, as of yet, only drawn the languorous, hors d’oeuvre-nibbling circles. A woman with tangled hair and a weathered face reclined just to my left, slipping away not long after I sat. A circle with an air of cocktail connoisseurship lounged at a table behind, the voice of a woman all tangled up in pearls rising above the rest. Blithe, Michele Pfeiffer-esque, she doted on some bit of theatrical news—a revival of Funny Girl, was it? And oh, did you ever see Barbra on Broadway? Back in the day—what a lark; what a presence on the stage. And from the clump of untirable business execs, a stout woman in a pantsuit, wearing rings as large as cherries, hawked about some conversation she’d had with her son—about cell phones not working in a nuclear war? And the diminishing dark summoned again the dark-skinned, weathered piano man, playing his nocturnes to no one, like he hadn’t a care on the earth. It all felt so Fitzgeraldian—so perfectly cohesive in its core of disconnection.

I let my consciousness melt—into the lines of my notebook, in the morphing din of conversation, in the rhythm of the bartenders’ dance—a duo that evening, both of them dressed in black, one with a flawlessly squared jawline, the other with a stack of skulls tattooed on her forearm—and in the slapdash, slipshod notes that spilled from my pen like blood from a painless, undiscovered wound.

Reaching the end of my second drink—the color of chartreuse with a minty, bittersweet aftertaste—I glanced round to find the lateness of the hour had summoned its usual cast of players, the majority of which were all beautiful in the worst way. Tell me how it is that some who walk this earth seem blessed as Apollo or Dionysus reincarnate, while it’s always the melancholic spirit of Orpheus tapping on my shoulder? I ached to tell them how frozen-in-time I found them, to transfer to them the vision I saw. From the trio in the corner, absorbed in their eager disputing, the young cowboy with perfect teeth, the plucky woman with dark almond eyes and pants patterned in magnolia leaves… All those liberal smiles, their shining eyes, bright lips stretched wide, arms graced over the backs of chairs, limbs rippling, metallic flashes of jewelry as hands danced through the air, on glassware, in hair, room ringing in laughter like the trilling of harp strings. It all begged an unceasing, circling question of me. Will I, won’t I, will I, won’t I will I won’t I join the dance? But enticing as it called, still I knew when the time came, I’d leave the place without a backward glance. That was the exchange on nights such as those. They kept their anonymity, I kept my inspiration, and no one had to ask how much was truth and how much charade. I told myself I preferred it that way, the freedom of solace, the nurturing shadows, some self-imposed, undefined purpose—more than any bright abandon that reality could offer.

“You writing about how good that cocktail is?” a voice interrupted.

My pen hung in the air. By some inexplicable instinct, I knew before turning who the voice belonged to. With a melodious lilt like rain and still a sultry, bristling edge, I knew somehow it was Persephone who’d spoken. And though I’d silently begun to think of the lounge as a place erected in her honor, a reimagined temple preserving her spirit, if you will—still I felt caught in surprise, encountering her there, on the barstool next to mine. But I turned and it was the woman from before, the one who’d been sitting at the far end when I first entered—now perched on the stool with her legs crossed, trailing her finger on the rim of a wineglass and watching me with a terrible, mischievous glint in her eye. Of course she would be here, I thought. It seemed only natural. And still— But why— The goddess of springtime lifted a single brow, like the folding of wings on a butterfly, and I realized with a start I had left her unanswered.

“Not exactly,” I said, “though it’s certainly deserving of it.” It seemed necessary to comment on my writing, seeing as she’d mentioned it, and I scrambled for an explanation that wouldn’t trail back to the topic of my loneliness, which seemed to me the black, tunneling center of what I’d been scribbling toward. And while I grasped for a line, some offering of discussion, I regarded the air of this otherworldly spirit, for a moment seemingly human.

“I’ve never seen you in here before,” I said. “Do you come by often?”

“I would have come sooner, but it wasn’t quite time,” she replied. “I was on my way up—from down below, you know—but,” she lifted a shoulder, “Hades pulled me back in for another kiss… Hard to get away sometimes.” She stared at the lights burning beneath the bar shelves then took a swallow of her wine. “But here I am.”

“Here you are,” I echoed.

She cocked an elbow on her chair, waves of hair spilling over the back, while a loose, black layer of fabric shifted across her body, revealing a splashy pattern of florals beneath it. From her silent appraisal of the room and the gracefully impulsive way in which she fluttered her fingers through the air, as though playing an instrument visible only to her, she seemed a woman perfectly at ease with herself and the world—or at least this corner of it. Her arresting attention turned back to me, and her features ignited in a devious smile.

“But don’t let me stop you.”

Her eyes flicked to my discarded notebook and pen.

“Oh…that’s not very important,” I said. “I was only thinking about patron saints and…deities of Greek origin, such as yourself…and how these figures stand as symbols or embody a specific aspect of the world.” I turned the words over in my mind, testing their rhythm. Patron saints; Greek gods; entities of a certain cause…

“Well, I don’t know about all that,” she said, flicking her hand. She took another sip of wine. “The way I see it, I’m just a gal trying to live and let live.”

“Still,” I said. “It must be nice having a purpose. Or feeling secured in the assurance of it… Whatever it is.”

“Maybe your purpose is just to live.”

“No, I’m afraid that’s too simple. It would scare me a bit.”

“Just because you find your purpose doesn’t mean you won’t struggle to grow in it. Hell, I would know. You try growing something green in the underworld. Not that I haven’t tried, you know. And Hades, he really is a doll. He built me this greenhouse one year. All by himself. He did! The whole thing framed in this beautiful ironwork, with panes of glass the color of the Styx when rings of flame reflect off it… But of course, there’s not much I can actually grow in there—a few subterraneans maybe, that’s about it. And it still wouldn’t be the same without all my beautiful butterflies and goldfinches. I use it as a wine cellar mostly—the greenhouse. Great fun whenever guests come to visit. Which isn’t too often, but still.”

She crouched forward, poised against the bar with a frame like a live oak, hair cascading like strands of Spanish moss.

“So I had to find other ways—other things to grow. Things less material. Things like comfort or hope.” Her gaze drifted off into the dim lights again. “A lot of sad souls down there…in my husband’s realm. In our kingdom under the ground…”

Her eyes glazed over, buried in a thousand unspoken realities, an infinite network of roots, threading back into the core of the earth; rivers of time carrying rivers of souls—and how many of their cries had she heard? And how many more would she hear, before all was ended?

“You’d think the earth would be better,” she murmured out of her reverie, a sweet raspy tone in her voice. “Up here, up above. But every time I come back to visit my mother…”

She didn’t finish her sentence. It was then I noticed her hair, the strange coloring of which I’d accounted to the blend of low lights and shadows, was in fact changing of its own will. From locks of deep red to dirt black to smoky gray—and so did the lines on her face seem to deepen and smooth intermittently. She must have caught me staring, because she offered me a reassuring sort of smile, even as she said, “The human heart is losing its belief in things outside itself, in things beyond what the eyes can see. The world is losing its soul… And the earth in turn is fading.”

I felt unequipped to engage in a topic of such truths; despite my own convictions, I hadn’t seen the cycles, the evolution of the ages, not like she had.

“But you’re a—well, you’re—”

“We’re immortal—not unchangeable. A few more years—a few more decades, who knows? Maybe I’ll be little more than a flower growing in a field at the edge of a forgotten wood, roots stretching down into dark waters.”

She drained the rest of her wine, set the empty glass on the counter with a hollow chime. “Another round, brother,” she said to the bartender. “And one for our friend as well.”

He nodded and swiftly returned with a glass of red wine and another cocktail, still green but a different shade. I fiddled with the leaf clipped to its rim, composing variations of Eliot. If all time points to one end… which is always present. All lives lead to one end… All rivers round the same bend… The river flows to one end. All life contains all death…

“But that’s what this is about,” Persephone announced, plucking a toothpick from an unattended coupe glass and removing its bright cube of fruit with her teeth, then chewing: “It’s about rebirth.”

She raised her eyebrows and sat back, her contented, ambiguous smile stretching across rose-petal lips. I wanted to ask her just what she meant by it, but her demeanor suggested she’d already offered an explanation. Was she leading me to the larger picture by asking me to look at the importance of each individual moment? Maybe it wasn’t about where the river flowed in the end—but the beauty we could touch there, right in front of us. Did it matter how many times we died in a day as long as we found a way to be reborn again?

I studied the faces of the chorus in the room—their starlight eyes, their cascading curls. All their eager smiles and unassuming words. What did it say about me—that I sat among them too?

“I guess the divine can be found in all kinds of tiny, tangible pockets of life,” I said.

“What, like this one?”

I wasn’t sure if that’s what I’d meant. I shrugged. My imagination would typically draw upon something more celestial, a little less humble. And yet—here she was.

“Maybe, maybe to someone,” she said. “To me it’s mostly a watering hole.” Another swig of wine. “With a damn fine lot of water.”

The music overhead plunged like a swan-diver into a confetti-strewn swimming pool, traversing a line between jazzy pop and brassy orchestrations—and drawing Persephone out of her chair with a flowery stomp.

“I adore this song!” she cried, brushing her hand on my shoulder like a butterfly taking flight from a twig and twirled her way to the vacant corner of the mic stand. Her arms entwined the air like vines, the breezy layers of her mantle drifting like black petals, the fabric of her dress spilling out beneath. Her infectious energy enticed a few others from their chairs, turning the once piano-held chamber into an improvised little dance theater—goddess of springtime at the center, hair spinning out in lovely coils—coaxing the dreamers and the lovers and the lost into bloom.

And the dust-bronze door swept open, and the lounge crashed in a new wave of warm-blooded strangers, and I gathered up my notebook and asked the bartender for the bill. And when it came, it showed only two drinks on the order, and I glanced up to thank Persephone, to catch another of her dangerous winks, but in all the troupe milling about on the floor and in the stools, she did not float among them, and the door had already shut, and where had she gone?—And I was left sitting at the far end of the bar, tracing my fingers along the leaf-and-vine patterns carved into its edge, which I had never noticed before.

All the glass and neon melted away in the dark; the night spread vacant, an empty sort of hellish. The churches all converted into barbeque joints kept their stained glass windows but covered up their old signs in white butcher paper that rattled in the wind. The city morphed from local district to a pocket of forest, and I sat on a fallen tree, waiting for the shade of Orpheus to sing to me again. The sky a polluted gray-violet, my gaze caught in the horizon amid the spiderwebs of tree branches. And songs began to unfold on the wind, prophecies given by present-day oracles—bright things with lyrical ways of communicating, forging paths to the spiritual world, to the human heart. And the harder they rang, the further I flew. Not because I wanted to leave, but because I longed for something other.

And I raged against my perception of the gods, charging against a sea of clouds that by day would undulate in bright waves of Aphrodite-pink and Peitho-silver and Eros-gold. But all was violet and dark, and they could fume against my cause all they liked, such hours belonged to Hades and Persephone and to us, their wild children. I felt then I could walk to the underworld and back—and not to rescue some fallen lover—but just to say I did.

But oh, Orpheus. What did you walk out with?

It seemed to me I was still trying to be someone—not different from who I was—but more than who I was. But maybe, I thought, maybe some people go to bars or theaters or museums, not for Persephone or the evocative lighting or because they think of them as temples built to the muses—but because to them, a bar is just a bar, a museum just a museum. The idea held a beautiful simplicity, but one that was lost to me. The way I saw it, everything tangled in intentionality. Everything moved with calculation. Nothing meant what it meant anymore; everything was metaphor. Halls would fade in footsteps but I’d hear only the echoing notes of a piano solo, wandering lost in a mystic-looking parlor. ‘The awkward desire to make out with statues.’ Had someone already written such a memoir? My mind stirred incurably rampant. No, I didn’t want a cure for it—but a chance at tranquility would have been well appreciated.

But those visionary sparks in the gloom, they held their purpose too, tracing a path like scarlet pomegranate seeds shining in the palm of night. The runner’s feet flashing on the field. A flame of hair in the wind. The sting of sun on the steel of swords—raised high like all those praying hands, rising out of the smoke. Time is a father, and though all rivers lead to his imperial fingers like threads to the weaver, still I swam against his current. The Earth is a mother, and though her beauty spins ephemeral to melt into another winter, if not something darker, still I danced in her arms, however short-lived. I walked a black river, trees crawling along the hillside, cutting through the clouds like a jewel-encrusted knife. The deep swelled about me, a land I could not touch. A land I reached for nonetheless. Nothing in this world seemed beautiful without also being broken.

I felt drawn to revel in the imperfection, to rejoice in its heritage—mother, the goddess of growth; father, the keeper of souls. The endless duet of my soul’s conflict, the rift between rebirth and death. And would I learn to leave the underworld with more than empty hands? I coasted down the chalky pavement of the city’s River Styx, remembering a goddess’ terrible smile, her diamond-cutting wink. If she could learn to endure an existence of constant rebirth, of dancing with the fools whose souls she would comfort in the end, whose demons she guarded against, then surely I could learn to live, in spite of myself, in spite of all this. If it was granted that I might stand the night, perhaps I too would learn to blossom in the dark. Grounded in my humanity, reaching for the divine.