She sees a golden haze as the fresh light blinds her momentarily on her return from the underworld, the darkness that is at once both imminent and transitory. A price paid for eating of the tree. But now, blinking and seeing again, always as if for the first time, the Primavera. The hope of summer, still scantily dressed in a hint of luminous pale green. The faith that happiness will return, that loss and occlusion is passing. Persephone stands and looks, a mythical figure of change, redemption and, to me, the passing cloud of depression. I am an avatar of this pomegranate-eating woman. We all share her legacy – descending into darkness, seasonal or personal – in an unending cycle. Persephone always wonders whether she has the heart to do it all again, as she walks from darkness to light. Then she sees the first spring flower and feels the first weak warmth of the early season sun. A smile slowly spreads across her winter-pale face, ‘Bloody Pomegranates!’

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Looking into the mirror pool, reaching out like Michelangelo's God, the two fingers meet, the image shattered. The mercurial water runs alchemical up my arm, the sudden moisture spreading through me. And I think, 'I heard you call my name ...'