the blade is smooth stainless steel,
silver and burgundy and slick with
your own personal poison.
the room smells like iron. your stomach turns.
this is limbo. you know now, how it feels to
bleed.
they taught me to lick tar from the wound, to
let the venom sit and simmer
before it cooks around your flesh.
this bite will leave a mark once the
bruising and blood have gone.
you ask me why i am smiling.
i am in here with you?
i bare my teeth: i have not stopped feeling
for a moment since i became a thing alive.
i am the wolf that made the wound,
i tell you, and i am the cage
and i am the hunter who put it there.
i say, you are the deer in the headlights,
the flesh by the hearth, the
dying ember at dawn. no hope for
a dead man. no hope for a wolf in a
cage.
we will go down together.
ON FEMININE RAGE
"if I could do girlhood again, i'd ask to be scarier. Less whimpering—more pyromaniac urges, more flirting with kerosene."
sally wen mao, mad honey symposium
CHORUS LEADER:
you would become the wretchedest of women.
MEDEA:
then let it be.
MEDIA, c. 431 BC
