In Defence of Medea

The cruelty of marble is its echo, an equal to inflexibility.

She is bound by her flesh.

Then,

fury.

in defence of medea

Words by Sabrina Donato @ssabrinasays

The marble receives her footsteps quietly, intimately, as a mother might caress the cheek of their child. Cut from the earth, hardened by steel, both she and the walls are born of the same heat. Now grown, the stone long set in darkness, her soles cannot cool. The sculptor who softens earth into flesh has not visited Medea.

She knows the rise of his chest too well. She has not woken him, though from where she stands his every scar is distinguishable.

There is ugliness in them both.

Unblinking eyes of the night visitor carve the length of his arms to the figure they fortify. But where the desire to lie beside him once resided is an inferno. Burnt, irredeemable.

Furrowed brow and unyielding jaw; his dreaming self awaits her arrival. And behind those eyes, a nightmare that she has written. To gaze upon his naked fear, bare of artificial tenderness, callous arrogance, it is for this reason she has made her visit. That, and another.

The weight of the blade is equal in her palm and mind – light, familiar. A comfort, greater than he had been. The blade is worthy of legend, not the hero. She weaves a well-worn thread. Terror, despair, death – these are horrors the blade endures. Hope, love, life – these are realities the blade ensures. It is the blade that separates flesh. It is the blade that brings blood. But blood often stains, she turns the metal in her hands. And new blades may be forged. To him, she was only a weapon.

True, she is drawn to silver, a fine metal enough. But gold. She knew she was nothing less than gilded. Soon, the bards will sing of a woman wreathed in the sun’s rays.

Soon.

He stirs and it stings. The parting of his lips, her son’s. The curl on his cheek, her daughter’s. She would run her hand through that obsidian mane, but that it caught between her fingers made her sick. And there, his greatest joy: more of himself. She bears the sight of them only if she imagines those parts of him buried. Disease belonged to the dirt.

No – I love them, too. They are mine, too.

Why does she forget?

A phantom with his face rises from the bed. Mother and father meet eyes. All that you have, I gave, he says. All that you are, I am greater. With the teethbearing grin of her eldest – All that will remain of you, mine.

Knuckles white around death, she does not reach for his neck. Too easy, Charon’s passage. Too gentle, those eternal fields.

Those who slight Medea do not know slumber for many, many years.

May his entire line vanish.