The Woman Turned to Stone
Punished for a crime the god committed against her
I was punished for a crime that the god himself had committed against my will.
Let that sentence stand, for it is the whole of my story, compressed into a single breath.
They say I was proud, that my beauty was an insult flung at the deathless ones.
But what beauty asks to be seen? What face petitions the eyes that fall upon it?
I was walking home beneath the olive trees when the god decided that he wanted me.
I did not , and my refusal was rewritten, by priests, as a temple defiled.
So the goddess, offended, turned her not upon the god but upon the girl.
Was I consulted? Was I asked whether the punishment fit the thing I had not done?
My hair was made a nest of serpents, and my was made a weapon.
Men who had once composed songs to my eyes now died the moment they met them.
I was hunted as a horror, though I had done nothing but survive what was done to me.
Consider how the tale is told: the god is a footnote, the is the .
Consider who wrote it, and for whom, and which powerful names it was careful never to blame.
When the hero came for my head, he was called brave, and I was called a curse.
He crept upon me while I slept, using a mirror so he need not meet my eyes.
Even my killer would not look at me directly, and this, too, they named .
My head was taken as a prize and fixed upon a shield to frighten armies.
In death, as in life, I was made an of someone else's glory.
But stone remembers, and I have had long centuries in which to arrange my thoughts.
Ask yourselves this, you who repeat the tidy version handed down to you.
If the powerful may sin and then reassign the guilt, what is but a story?
If the is transformed into the monster, who is the monster truly serving?
I do not ask for pity, which is only wearing a softer garment.
I ask for the question, kept alive, that the old song was designed to bury.
Turn the tale over in your hands, and look for the seams where the powerful sewed it shut.
And when you find them, tell me whose should have turned to stone that day.