E.P. .

“Despite what you’ve read, your sadness is not beautiful. No one will see you in the bookstore, curled up with your Bukowski, and want to save you.
Stop waiting for a salvation that will not come from the grey-eyed boy looking for an annotated copy of Shakespeare,
for an end to your sadness in Keats.
He coughed up his lungs at 25, and flowery words cannot conceal a life barely lived.
Your life is fragile, just beginning, teetering on the violent edge of the world.
Your sadness will bury you alive, and you are the only one who can shovel your way out with hardened hands and ragged fingernails, bleeding your despair into the unforgiving earth.
Darling, you see, no heroes are coming for you. Grab your sword, and don your own armor.”
― Emily Palermo

“They’ve kept the truth
about Persephone a secret,
burying it deep below
Hercules’s murdered wife
and all of Zeus’s affairs.
It’s dangerous, you see,
a spark threatening to
ignite a long dead flame.

Power.

She loved her power,
the Queen of the Dead,
to forever reign
in the fires of hell.
She wore her crown
like a beacon;
a beautiful queen,
plotting against her king.
They never wanted you
to know the hunger of Persephone,
how she starved for something
other than pomegranates.

Control.

The primal thirst
that burns all women’s throats,
denied by eons of men.
Listen closely to the voice from hell, sweetheart.
“You are a queen;
don’t wait for a king.”
― Emily Palermo