Scylla

By Bex Hainsworth

A nymph unburdened by beauty is a nightmare.

My barnacle flesh scratches against stone
as I curl up in my cave, full of octopus cunning;
folding many limbs around myself, cruel, content.

This was Circe’s gift: to make me a monster,
a maneater. The distant roar of Charybdis
rocks me to an easy sleep each night.

I know they will take the dangerous road,
right to my mountain door. The men,
the soldiers, the heroes. The semi-divine.

They taste of revenge, of justice
for the ripped dresses, for the temple maids
who lost the chase, the dryads who couldn’t
get away, and the goddesses who never escaped.
For Leda, and Persephone, and Helen. For Hera.

This is for my own golden bruises.

I hold vigil. My teeth are tapers, glinting in the dark,
for all my sacrificial sisters. No offerings
are made in my name, no altars, no prayers.
No matter. The sea provides settlement.

You should hear them scream for me.
I rip the last words from their throats
with claws like scythes.

Afterwards, wiggling a thigh bone free
with the stick of a ship’s mast,
I recite my affirmations:

let them know how it felt beneath their bodies,
let their hearts freeze at the thought of me,
let them know what it is to be truly afraid.

A nymph unburdened by beauty is their nightmare.

Bex Hainsworth (she/her) is a bisexual poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Ethel Zine, Atrium, Okay Donkey, trampset, and bath magg. Find her on Twitter @PoetBex.

Illustration of “Pesce Donna” from Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi’s Istorica descrizione de’ tre’ regni Congo, Matamba, et Angola, 1687, via Public Domain Review.

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