Compilation

titan

i first saw you when they strung an infant, quivering spool of thread on a deathless loom. you were titan, shoulders cresting the peaks of olympus, eyes fogged with snake-grey wisdom: it was as if someone had taken the clouds and put them in your hair, your eyes; melted marble to wax. your voice was soft as salve, your melodies smooth as marbles. i accepted your gifts as you gave them, your stories, your humor, your benevolent kiss — yet for you they were the hesperides' golden apples, the glittering robe of chrysomallus, the river god's horn of plenty. priam trembles with shame on the battlements of ilium; niobe weeps tears of stone atop the summit of sipylus at the sight of you. you held a torch as i stumbled on misty crossroads, stilled my hand as i reached for epimetheus' pithos. you led me across frolicking forms of nereids, beneath pearly canopies of vaulting roofs, from the fringes of elysium to the edges of asphodel — you and i, our laughter and our song, we knew no bounds.

then the sickness, bane of asclepius, he afflicted you with his curse; in vain you called out to panacea. i was adrift at sea, in war, lost in a blind journey in search of home, lulled to foreign lands by a sailor's song. you implored me not to illuminate by candlelight the monstrous face of danger, and your plea we​​nt unheeded. even so, when i drove the sun into the sky you went to hephaestus and begged for his armor to shield me. when i willingly ate the ink-kissed pomegranate seeds you gave me your waxen wi​​ngs and told me to fly. all this i took and left on my odyssey.

when, eventually, they snip the thread and melinoe's darkness comes swirling to meet your eyes, i don't know if i will be there. if i am, though, i will caress the marble of your boneless hands, and i will lean forward to whisper the simple melody of your name in your ear: "priam."