1
You are a creature of the earth. That is all you ever have been and all you ever can be.
You begin stiff, unseeing, enclosed in a block of marble. Over months of someone’s invisible efforts, your coffin chips away. Small pricks like peas under mattresses chatter against your skin for hours on end. Eventually, your eyes are cleared and your prison is revealed.
After the constant hellish pokes, a round room is the last thing you expect. They say circles are symbols of comfort. But this rotund space has not done its caring part.
The goddess Nyx reaches her silver fingers through the window and blinds you with her moonlight. She touches the hunched figure of a man stomping around the room. Despite his divine spotlight, he is not luminous. His shadowy figure scrapes the thatch off of the ceiling. The sandpaper hair that coats his head, face, and arms does not glow but rusts like drying blood.
As he marches towards you, feel tremors under your feet and see hunger in his eyes. He speaks to you through porcine, slit eyes and, though sound does not penetrate stone, know what he says anyway as his breath eeks across your cheekbone and he presses his sticky lips to you.
Wrapped in a delicate layer of petrification, you weep to the gods.
Beg, “Please Diana, let me out.” Remind her that she pities the fair maidens who seek her
protection. Offer yourself to her mighty hunt. Show her that you, too, wish to run, to fly, to pin
the stars to the sky by the light of her moon. Can she leave you to be consumed by this man?
2
The moon has set and risen. He carves away at the block around your arms, shaping delicate fingers. Wonder what will happen when the whole of your body has been shaped and is naked to the air. Call to Juno, wife of the king, “Please do not subject me to this man.” Do not let him be the groom to your perpetual white veil. He scorns women, yet dares caress your stone body? Beg of Juno to be wed to her temple instead. How could you not be the most loyal bride?
12
He has been carving away at your hair, blocking your vision. But imagine that you can feel the sunlight as it languishes on the straw coating the dirt floor. Whisper, “Apollo, let me be warm in the light of your sun. Let blankets of light seep into soft pores of human skin rather than marble.” Must he let it go to waste sitting on the gloss of cold stone?