Beloved,
There is a version of me that only you have seen.
The one who went under. The one who stopped answering the phone for a whole winter, who slept with the curtains closed, who could not remember why anyone bothered to plant anything. Everyone else saw me go quiet. You saw where I went.
I used to read your story as a kidnapping and nothing more. Flowers in a meadow, one bright bloom, the ground splitting open, the dark. I still grieve for that Kore reaching for the bloom. But I have lived long enough now to know the other half of you. The queen. The one who learned the shape of the underworld and came to rule it.
I think about the pomegranate seeds. How small they are. How a few red jewels on the tongue could bind someone to two worlds. I have swallowed seeds like that. A hospital corridor at midnight. A goodbye I did not choose. Things that changed me, that I would carry back up into the light.
And I did come back, beloved. Slowly. The way the first green shoots come, uncertain, pushing through last year's leaves. I came back with something I did not have before. Not quite wisdom. More like authority over my own dark.
Now when the evenings go hushed and early in November, I do not panic the way I used to. I know you are going down. I know you are coming back.
So here is my question for you, queen of two worlds: what did you bring back the first time? I am sitting with half a pomegranate on a white plate, staining my fingers, waiting to hear. I think I already know. I think it was yourself.