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The Myth
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The myth always starts with a girl picking flowers alone, snapping stems with delicate fingers or washing clothes by the riverbank— the regular slap, slap of wet linen against the rocks.
He is disguised as a pure white swan with a neck outstretched like a young girl’s wrist or a mountain-backed bull, eyes like two dark wells.
He swoops in, his beak a saber. He charges, his horn a dirk.
They will say these stories are about ascent into the spiritual realm, the consolidation of cultures, or the turning of the seasons.
They will say she shouldn’t have been picking flowers at that time of day, or maybe she liked those big cow eyes, or maybe her peplos was a little too short.
They will turn it into a myth.
But I am the girl in that field, amid its broken feeling, its wordless sky, the heat of the sun terrible on naked skin— staring down the gullet of the god and the animal.
Don’t tell me what these stories are about. These stories are about rape.
