RV Station

Women, Wives, Mothers, to you I offer a plea.
Let us all become Persephone.
Six months in one realm and six in another.
Choose what those would be.

For me
One would be this world,
of homes, of people, of acquaintances and friends and relations and colleagues and bonds and presences and social everything.

Take away half my year
Keep me here, call me dear,
Drown me in my worst fears.
I’ll take it.
I’ll brave it.
I’ll put on a genuine smile at times and sometimes I’ll fake it.
But I’ll deal.
You won’t feel
The anxiety bubbling beneath my skin
You won’t see the guilt, the unnecessary or unavoidable worry,
the helplessness, or the golden cage I’m in.
This half will pass with me trying
To be at my best,
Controlled, decent, undefying.

But for the next half of the year,
let me be the Queen of my Underworld.
Let me be, for you see, the darkness is from where I have emerged
I long to be back, to be what I am,
In my true form
Because I’m not this lamb
Not this meek person you see,
but a crazy, weird, unconventional force to be reckoned with
So give me my half of the year, Let me wear once again my crown
I want to sway in the storm’s ripples, I want to let my hair down
I want silence, dark, brooding, for in it I see, I feel comfort
I want to breathe beneath the sun
To feel, under my feet, uninhibited dirt
Undisturbed slumbers, unperturbed craft
I want to dive deep in my trenches, sail away on my imagination’s raft
Into an ocean that is me as much as it isn’t
Into a land where I am not known
Where my throne is very much my own
Nothing grand, just bathed in my true, honest tone

For the sake of my sanity, for the sake of my soul
For just a few months every year, I want to be alone
Hear my plea, and take it away to make it yours
Let us go to our underworlds,
Let us all become Persephone.