We went to a small glass café overlooking the dark water
and drank something I didn’t recognize
in the red leather booth
“You are corrupting me, my darling,” I said
having another bittersweet sip
I felt my body melting under the table
The waves crashed against the rocks
What if I couldn’t get up and leave?
Would you desert me here?
No, you took me home again
You bit me gently, not drawing blood
You fed me pomegranate seeds
I sucked the clear red coating off the sharp white pith
The taste was sweet at first
and then dry as dirt, as bone
“I love you so much that I don’t care if I die,” I told you
So what if you didn’t say it back?
Your hair was always cold against my burning skin, cold
and smelled of smoke
Your skin was always cool and sleek
Hades, my love
Are you just one more task
to bring back the lover I burned with my candle wax?
with the flame of my doubt?
One day after we had eaten oranges in the rare sunlight
I remembered him
the pressure of his lips on my forehead
and at my throat—
making my hot skin feel icy with their burn
The calluses and soft places on his hands
The vibration of his voice in his chest
as he gave me the myths again
I told you the story then, and you said
“He was a monster to do that to you
Did he think he was so much better than you
that you couldn’t see him?”
I told you about Orpheus and you said
“Maybe he didn’t kill himself
Maybe his girlfriend shot him in the head”
You had different ways to bite
I wondered how much more pressure it would take
to make the blood come
Once we drove all the way back to the city I’m from
We passed the cattle waiting for slaughter
by the side of the highway
The air reeked with fear
You said you grew up on a farm
You saw cows killed
When I asked you to tell me more
about your childhood you just laughed
cranked up
the music and rammed
your foot against the pedal
We didn’t stop in the city
but drove all the way through to the border
There were signs along the highway
of silhouetted, running people
holding the hands of their children
like animals, like targets
At the border you turned off the music
smoothed your hair with some water
from the bottle you had gripped between your thighs
You took off your sunglasses and spoke politely
“Yes, Officer, no sir”
No one would have suspected you
No one would have thought, This is Hades himself
In the border town the light was harsh
Dust motes looked as if they were catching on fire
You took my hand and we ran
through the unpaved streets, past the little shops
We bought loads of black leather belts
and cuffs studded with sharp silver
You pulled me down some stairs
into a dark bar where you made me drink tequila
I marveled at the worm saturated with poison
My head was pounding as we emerged
back up into the sun
A lovely girl had a huge tumor in her neck
A man was missing his hand
We found a punk band playing in the dust
The lead singer was a Mexican albino
with tattoos all over his body and shaved head
The band was good, really fast
I was so thirsty
We ate some greasy food and you ordered beers
There was a tiny building that said CASAMIENTOS
and you said we should get married
You laughed
and I felt like the worm in the tequila bottle—
bloated, sick, greenish-white, trapped, in love
That night there were fireworks
You grabbed my hand and we ran through the streets
as the sky exploded
There was panic in your eyes I didn’t understand
Maybe I had imagined it
I was wearing my mother’s green satin cocktail dress
hemmed short, above my knees
and dusty black cowboy boots
We headed back that night
and slept by the sea in your truck
I vomited on the sand
You carried me into the ocean as the sun rose
“Good for hangovers,” you said
I was so cold
I didn’t stop shivering for hours after I got out
The sun turned the water to aluminum foil
I was afraid it would all just burn up
anyway
Then suddenly you stopped wanting me
You turned away
You wouldn’t touch me
I lay staring at your cold, muscular white back
your blue-black shiny hair
I wondered what I had done wrong—
I had lost weight, so my belly was concave again
I was seeing a dermatologist—
Or maybe I was being selfish
Maybe you had been wounded when you were younger
Maybe you had been damaged and this wasn’t about me
at all
I tried to ask you if you had been hurt
“Do you know Philomela?” I asked
“Who?”
“The myth
She was raped by her sister’s husband
When she threatened to tell, he cut out her tongue
She turned into a nightingale
She sang her story”
“Do you want to know why we don’t have sex?”
you asked
I started to cry and you said
“Not everyone has been molested, okay?
Maybe I just don’t want to fuck you anymore.
Have you ever thought of that?”
“Is there something I could do differently?” I asked
“We could try it different ways,” I said
You smiled at me
Your incisors sharp
Your eyes were two dark bandages
“I thought you’d never ask, baby,” you said
The more punishment, the sooner I will be redeemed?
You had finally earned your name.
Hades
Hades grew up on a farm in an old red house next to a dilapidated barn. There were cornfields stretching to the horizon; maybe they went on forever. Hades believed they were haunted. The wind in the corn sang strange whispers. Sometimes he’d catch glimpses of emaciated people, thin as scarecrows, with corncob pipes, straw hats, missing teeth, wading shoulder deep through the cornfields. Sometimes he imagined he heard children screaming.
Once at baseball practice he was almost struck by lightning. It hit a tree beside him instead, charred and gnarled it, and he kept imagining his own body ruined like that.
In the winter it was so cold that Hades got frostbite. He had stayed out too late in the snow making angels, not wanting to return home. His father told him he might lose his fingers. He lay in bed trying not to cry, imagining the stumps on his hands.
In the summer Hades was always bathed in sweat from the humidity. His mother screamed at him to bathe. “You stink!” At night he ran through the meadows catching fireflies in jars. Then he took them home
and watched them die, the lights snuffed out.
He saw animals born and he saw them slaughtered. Blood was just something that was on your hands all the time. Blood was just another bodily fluid. There were more interesting ones.
When Hades wet his bed at the age of five his mother put him back in diapers. She stuck the pins into him. She kept diapering him until he was twelve years old.
When Hades had an erection his mother locked him in the closet. Sometimes she even beat him. This didn’t stop Hades from getting hard. It made him harder in every way.
Hades’s father waited for him when he came out of the shower. He commented on the size of Hades’s penis. He showed his son his own. There was something odd about the way Hades’s father taught him to slaughter a cow. There was some kind of pleasure in it. Sometimes Hades’s father would set off fireworks from behind the barn and watch to see his son jump at the noise.
Hades’s mother did not like how her husband looked at their son. Because of this she beat Hades even harder. She beat him and locked him in the closet and finally Hades left home.
He had been born an unscarred, sweet-smelling baby with pale down on his head that soon fell out and blue eyes that turned pupil-less black. He had been born loving animals and tractors, getting lost in the lightning bug meadows, lost in the angel-making snow. He had become something else entirely. So he decided to become something else again. He changed his name, he changed the color of his hair, he wore eyeliner and grew his fingernails, changed his skin with ink tattoos of devil girls. He went alone into the desert to set off fireworks to immunize himself to loud sounds. He developed an insatiable appetite for meat, any food that bled, that had once had eyes. He became rich, a businessman. He listened to the loudest music, sought it out, to further immunize himself.
Hades saw Eurydice and plucked her like a flower. He became for her the god of chaos, the god of hell. This was why he wanted her. She was proof of his success, his change.
Persephone
At last, she came for me
I had waited forever
I took the train home from my hell god
It was late morning
My mouth was parched
My skin felt raw
My eyes ached in the sunlight
There were bruises and bite marks
hidden under my clothes
One of my ribs was dislocated
I heard it pop out when Hades took me from behind
and every time I breathed
I felt the scrape of it
I did not think of myself as damaged, as a victim
I saw myself as a woman in love
I had forgotten that this was just maybe another trial
another task I must accomplish
another test
She was waiting for me in the lobby of the building
where I lived
Someone had let her in
She had slept all night on the horrible, scratchy sofa
She had gained weight and she had wrinkles
and she was so beautiful to me
I wanted to jump back inside of her
That was all I could think of
She didn’t say anything, she just held me
I wept into her long white linen trench coat
My rib hurt more when I cried but I didn’t care
She smelled like wildflowers, and that is not the same
as other flowers but much lighter—
a little acrid and sun-warmed and windy
She wore beautiful Italian shoes and no jewels
We went to the hotel where she was staying
It was a small villa overlooking the city
She ordered room service—
poached eggs under a silver cover, smoked salmon,
fruit and cheese, sparkling water
She made me take a bath
using the tiny bottle of green bath gel
and the soft white washcloth
When I came out
wrapped in the white terry cloth bathrobe
we sat on the bed and ate our meal
I realized how hungry I was
“How did you find me?” I asked her
“Your father”
“You went to him?
I thought you were never going to talk to him again”
“Everything was dying,” my mother said
“I was killing it; I couldn’t help myself
Without you everything was dead
and I knew I had to see him again
To find you
Anything was worth finding you”
“What did he make you do?” I asked
I knew my father. He didn’t do things for free
“Oh, nothing, don’t worry, darling,” she said
“Eat your eggs”
It was dark in the room
The pale green drapes were drawn closed
The sounds of the city were soft, faraway below us
“Now, who did this to you?”
She put her hand on my rib cage
Her fingers felt so good there, so cool
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not naïve, you know
Remember who I married?
I see all the signs”
I shook my head
“It’s not like that”
I didn’t want to tell her about Hades
Or even Orpheus
I wanted to tell her about my first lover, Love
The one who never hurt me
He killed me but he never
hurt me
Do you understand?
“I know that you are here with the god of hell,” my
mother said calmly. “I know because for me everything
is dying. I want you to come
back with me so I can come back to life. We can live together. You can go to school
there. This place is terrible for you. Look at you.”
But it wasn’t as simple
as that
What if I returned with her
and left my god of darkness?
Would I ever grow up?
Would I ever pass the test?
Would my first lover be mine again?
No, I would stay
a strange little girl, living with her mother
until they both died in some ritual
holding on to each other
the flowers blooming around them
killing them with beauty
“I can’t,” I told her
“It’s more complicated”
“Let’s go out,” my mother said
as if she wanted to show me
that the beauty of the world would not destroy me
That it was ours
The sun had come out and the city smelled of flowers
Trees were heavy with pink and white blossoms
The fog lay across the bay where Hades lived
It had not come over the bridge
My mother and I went to a café full of lovely people
We ordered brightly colored Italian sodas
and French pastries
Then we went shopping
The store windows were full of ballerinas
and brides in tulle
My mother bought me a white lace vintage dress
with a full skirt
and pale pink leather boots with sharp heels
We went to the art museum
and looked at the visiting exhibit—
boxes full of weird things
china dolls’ heads and hands
tree branches hung with crystal eyeballs
shattered pocket mirrors, a dead bird with one wing
paintings of goddesses that looked like men in drag
We sat beside a fountain and petted a golden retriever pup
Art students had set up their easels to work on the plaza
A clown was juggling
There was a skateboarding couple with dreadlocks
There was a man in a white shirt
with the sleeves rolled up, showing off
his brown forearms
He was reading a poetry book
and he smiled at us—bright teeth—
a toss of brown curls like a god in a painting
It was as if my mother had planned the whole thing
to show me what she could give me
That night my mother wanted to meet Hades
I told her no
We could go out together instead
The movie we saw
followed the lives of a group of children
Every seven years
the filmmaker made a documentary about them
The same children who had seemed so charming
and full of promise
changed
grew fat, sad, strange
I wondered how we keep from spoiling the angels
who come to us
I thought of the men I had known
what they must have been like when they were born
So gentle and small
I wondered if I could ever have children
knowing how I might damage them
Afterward my mother and I ate miso soup
and nightshade vegetable tempura
in a restaurant decorated with purple irises
She told me she still wanted to meet Hades
These mothers, they can be persistent
“It’s really not that serious,” I said
“I want you to know I don’t blame you”
said my mother
“I blame your father
And my father for setting such a bad example”
My mother’s father had swallowed her whole
and vomited her back up
My father had become a bull
a swan
a cloud
a shower
of gold
so that he could have sex with other women
It made sense that I would choose Hades
Who else would I choose?
I slept next to my mother