klymnestra

[klymnestra]

my mother, medusa, never left the temple. 

not really. i thought i always saw her there, on particularly bad nights when she would wake from dreams that gripped her with rough hands. or, often, she could not look straight at mirrors like a stranger was staring back. i learnt to get used to it, to chase away the nightmares and hoard mirrors in corners with the rest of her fears. i learnt that on good nights, my mother would hold me closer than the dreams could reach, and we’d fall into the morning together softly. 

she would tell me stories, sometimes, of all the world and their heroes. who learnt to fly and hold the sun in their palms, who were stronger than a hundred men. heroes who would always win in the end. she told me of the gods and their fists, too. how they liked to take. to ruin. how they would hold onto every beautiful thing and break it. only on these nights would my mother’s hands shake. and i’d catch sight of that same temple reflecting in the gleam of her eyes again. my mother, back in her cage, back in the dark.

in the end, of all the stories, my mother could never tell her own.

[klymnestra]

'He is all my art to me now,'

Basil Hallward for his muse Dorian Gray

[klymnestra]

Dorian Gray (2009)

[klymnestra]

"So am i a whore or not?"

"Who knows?, we're all whores, really, in some way or another."

Harry Cameron from TSHOEH

[klymnestra]

"You could be a nobody living under a cardboard box, and I'd still love you."

Evelyn to her beloved Celia

[klymnestra]

Our mouths opened under each other and the warmth of his sweetened throat poured into mine.

The song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

#the song of Achilles

[klymnestra]

If my future house doesn’t have ceilings like this then I want a redo on life

[klymnestra]

We were like gods dawning at the world, and our joy so bright that we could see nothing except the other.

[klymnestra]

Life's a constant cycle of wondering why you were never chosen to be the haunted bookkeeper, or the vampire's beloved, or the crooked witch on the edge of the kingdom, or the enemy finally falling for their lover

[klymnestra]

Prince of viles and tricks and a thousand ways. He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend i had none.

Circe by Madeline Miller

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[klymnestra]

Yet as strange as it sounds, even in such extremities i was not wholly miserable. I was used to unhappiness, formless and opaque, stretching out to every horizon. But this had shores, depth, a purpose and a shape. There was hope in it.

Circe by Madeline Miller

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[klymnestra]

Humbling women seems to be the chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.

Circe by Madeline miller

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[klymnestra]

I did not mind the emptiness either. For a thousand years i have tried to fill the space between myself and my family. Filling the rooms of my house was easy by comparison. I burned cedar in the fireplace and it's dark smoke kept me company. I sang which had never been allowed before, since my mother said i had the voice of a drowning gull. And when i did get lonely and found myself yearning for my brother then there was always the forest.

Circe by Madeline Miller

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