Another Persephone
By: A Person That Lives A Life
Tags: LGBTQ, Heartbreak, Divorce, Love, Mythology

Photo by Gabriel Manlake on Unsplash

There’s more sex in a look than in sex itself. Without the look, all is colorless. Passionless. Living becomes but a mundane nothingness of placid bodies and trigger warnings. Without the expression, energy remains at a permanent standstill, until life itself no longer exists.

Growth and desire are banished in limbo.

One cannot be human in limbo.

—

The mirror of my past reflects across the hibachi table.

A man and his wife order steak and shrimp for their anniversary. I say “his wife” because he treats her like an appendage — something he drags around but doesn’t speak to. In fact, he barely acknowledges her existence. He doesn’t speak more than two sentences to her over the course of the spatula juggling and eventual meal. She is clearly secondary, an afterthought, a being that orders food and makes the tab rise.

I only know it’s this couple’s anniversary because the waitress mentions it when she sets down their plate of sushi. While the husband’s gaze remains fixed upon his phone, his wife’s eyes glance around the room, searching for reprieve. I remember her pain all too well — a distracted husband making his wife’s desire for connection impossible.

And that’s just the public face. The visible manifestation of their fracture. I can too easily imagine what went on at home. What she survived.

If you wait too long, you will lose yourself. I try to give her my wisdom through my facial concern, but she’s looked away. She pulls out her phone as well, to match his lack of energy. His detachment kills her. It shows up in her halfhearted attempts to scroll down her screen while she sneaks glances at him. Her forced aloofness is vividly apparent when compared to her husband’s focus on everything that is not her.

How long have you lived this way? My stomach turns for her. She was me last year, and for several years before that. To love anyone and to know they are not bursting to speak with you reeks of despair. She is but a thing caged to loneliness. I only know as I was such a thing, not even a person. I was dead, delirious, and overwhelmed by a toxic hope that kept me longing for better days where I would finally matter.

It’s neither of their faults that they share no common interests apart from food and a commitment neither wants to break. Maybe one of them will wake up and see that isn’t enough. Not anymore. Not when she’s drowning.

Guilt and triumph mingle within me as I stare back at the mirror, knowing I broke it. I have a wicked laugh that rises several octaves. I want the woman to hear it and want it for herself.

As I eat my salmon and joke with my companions, I find myself thankful for no longer being bound by self-imposed shackles. That past is far too lost to allow myself to be trapped within any situation remotely similar again. Yet, I mourn for the woman I was: the woman constantly aching for unmet acknowledgment and pointed care.

How did I live so long in that hetero space of the side-kick expectation?

I did the thing women aren’t supposed to do: I became aware that I didn’t want what I had and that I was worth more than I was receiving.

I fell to the underworld. I’m not sure if I came back.

If my trials with Hades put me into the arms of a divine woman, I’ll be all the better for it.

—

I have come to admit that I have needs, sexual or otherwise. Just like everybody else.

I need the shared look. I need the fiery confirmation that another soul recognizes mine for what it is and values it beyond measure. I need those eyes of sensual delight. I need to feel their hunger for every sentence that leaves my lips. I need to be seen. I need to be heard. I need to be wanted, valued, and loved.

Most of all, I need someone who understands my power.

I’m not sorry for being so human.

Not anymore.