She is the ever-fleeing, ever-murdering,
Ever-abandoned, ever-disappointed woman,
Betrayed and solidified, from smooth to rough edges,
Exiled and feared, a female body led on
By wrath and enactment, a plague, a cage
Chasing after her, the deracination of her nature.
Was it love that erased all the signs of doom
Around her? Was it sex that made her believe
In love? Darkness attracting the light and vice versa?
Hunger for revenge always finds its prey.
She must never sleep, she can’t live up to her ideals.
They imposed an artificial love on her, infected her
With a feeling that was never hers, never innate.
Her body in revolt, it cannot take it, absorb it,
Expunge it, a state most alien to her, constructed.
Becoming half in his embrace. Silent when he speaks.
To her hands, death means everything, the hands are
Still old, they still belong, they bear her name wholeheartedly.
Whose responsibility are the actions of the woman who has been
Tampered with? Loving her never stemmed from the truth.
They burdened her body with a multitude of contradictory
Stories, the skin of a woman, the perfect material for reinvention.
A taunted woman irrevocably becomes the puppeteer.
As transformative and unpredictable as nature itself,
Medea wrestles with the role she plays in her own life,
Reactionary and offensive, she incorporates what she needs.
A trail of blood behind her that will always remain as cold as her own.
“Medea” by Nathaniel Sichel (1843-1907)
Croque-Melpomene 