Proserpina's Snow

"Myth neglects / the volcanic hearth of the underworld / that burnt the nerve endings of our protagonist’s feet."

The snow had melted over Proserpina’s skin, leaving her wet 
from a long winter of dreaming. In these dreams she cried out for Love: 
the deathly horse with grey eyes, peering from behind a curtain 
of theatrical shadows. 

When she came near to him, the horse kicked her in the head - 
hard. Maturity is the severance of the rational and the perverse, and so, 
Proserpina’s body was dealt with swiftly, as a problem
of juvenile disobedience. Her form was divided neatly 
into its constituent parts, bifurcated 

by a hand at the neck. Everything below 
was transferred from the dominion of the mother onto Pluto. 
Through these esoteric rites he was empowered now, in the eyes
of the law, to act with such force as reasonably necessary
to subdue her. Nightly she was inspected,

suspected of nothing. Kindly he would ask if she may take off
her shoes, and so, she would bend over to unlace them. As it occurred to her 
during this act, she was never given any to begin with. Myth neglects 
the volcanic hearth of the underworld 

that burnt the nerve endings of our protagonist’s feet. She wandered
through death’s dream kingdom naked, in adversarial contest 
with her flesh. Everything above is still in dispute, she thought,

if everything below is settled snow, melting into thin streams of water 
between the thighs of Proserpina. 

---

Samuel Massé, The Rape of Proserpina, Oil on Canvas