The Rape of Proserpine by Simone Pignoni (1650).

He felt me up —
thrust his dark red tongue in my mouth.

Then I could see nothing
only feel his groping hands on me
as he carried me through the dimming event horizon,
and swept me down into the black hole of Hades.

I tried to recall my mother’s face
in the golden field of sunflowers
as the tunnel to my future years on Earth
hissed shut overhead.

[Lorraine Schein is a New York writer. Her work has appeared in VICE Terraform, Witches & Pagans, Strange Horizons, Star*Line, and Little Blue Marble, and in the anthologies Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath, and Eighteen. The Futurist’s Mistress, her poetry book, is available from mayapplepress.com.]