What Do You Think Our Relationship Is?

These were not words that Zeus wanted to hear. He grumbled. I couldn’t hear him. He then put his arms on my shoulders. I felt like I was shrinking under his weight.

“Persephone, with your imagination, you should know what to call me. You should know what I want to hear.”

That wasn’t the point. Zeus continued. He was getting oracular, in his deepest bass-baritone.

“What do you think our relationship is—our truest relationship?”

I didn’t want to answer that question, and Zeus knew that I didn’t want to answer it.

I escaped into the ritual language paradoxes that our priestesses are well known for. “Our relationship is the relationship that always is and always will be but never can be.”

Zeus lifted me into his chariot.