Carnage

Pomegranates are a lot of damn trouble to eat. I keep buying them. I'm starting to realize I enjoy the preparation and the destruction left behind by the dissection of the pomegranate. My kitchen is a murder scene: red spotches on the counter, the refrigerator, the microwave. The empty shell of once-whole fruit, white and sad on the counter. Sometimes I find lingering stains months later, as if the juice deliberately played hide and seek out of self-preservation, to save the last little bit of itself.

Why does Persephone refuse to stay with Hades? He must have loved her tremendously. The proof? He prepared the damn pomegranate for her. She didn't have to do a damn thing. She didn't have to cut it, or seed it, or peel away that clinging, persistent white vein that makes the seeds so bitter. He spent a lot of time making those seeds perfect for her, and then held them out in his hand, red glistening enticing jewels. And she ate just six of them. She must have had iron restraint--or a small stomach. And it couldn't have been all that bad in the underworld. It had nice parts too. Probably fairly easy to avoid Sisyphus and the guy who fed his brother his own children (can't remember name). Just glide on to the Elysian Fields. Hades must have given her a tour. He probably kept preparing pomegranates for her too, but the ungrateful miss wouldn't eat them. Hades creating carnage in the name of love.

Then again, Hades was a god. Maybe the pomegranates magically de-seeded themselves for him.