“why does tragedy exist?
because you are full of rage.
why are you full of rage?
because you are full of grief.”
anne carson, in the preface of Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides.
matthew
i. first love never dies.
ii. your god
watches me while i drag my tongue across your throat.
i need It to see what true devotion looks like.
i need It to see what we are capable
of being, of becoming.
we pray each other’s name
into our skins
and our limbs.
(until the very point that the existence of gods
doesn’t bother us anymore.
we exist
and that’s enough)
(you smile while your god whispers all the penitence you must do to clean yourself of us. it is pointless, we all know that our love is more consistent than Its power).
iii. you dug my body from the grave because you could not believe i was dead.
iv. you drink my poison
and kiss copper.
trace my scars and pretend that i am lovable.
v. martyr
your red god plays with the word but does not speak
only in my head he lets it loose.
i died so you could live,
but do not trust your god.
it isn’t sacrifice if the meat is tainted.
(your god offers me no mercy,
but who else has been dead before?)
vi. on my knees
i
crawled
to die
on your
arms.
filth teaches filth
i. i was not born out of fear
or love.
if only you had cracked my ribs open
and peered inside.
everything is rotten.
ii. my father’s ghost wanders, leaving a trail of electricity.
a scorpion leaves his mouth
and comes to rest at my heart.
i wait for the sting
that does not come.
iii. remind of red
and everything that matters.
but he doesn’t understand:
blood is black;
hope is blue;
sadness is lilac;
i am red,
like fire and destruction and violence
and theo.
there was a monster,
who was also a boy,
but mostly a monster.
theo came for me and father,
hands clenching too close from my throat
his insides aching for violence.
my mother’s pistol was wielded by
stavros,
and he rested the cold barrel on theo’s forehead.
i begged for his life/
and so he lived.
so many years later
when i was no longer a girl
(but theo was still a boy)
i sat side by side with stavros,
my heart swelling with pain.
i said:
there theo is,
the son you never had.
i have this awful taste in my mouth,
it tells me we should have learned from this,
but we did not.
how many boys just like theo
have you killed?
stavros was a strong man,
stavros was reliable and dangerous
and painfully soft.
stavros saw me as the little girl i should have been
(if red didn’t exist),
you know he will die,
right?
beat.
right?
beat.
i mean, he is supposed to die.
he is a monster,
a hero will be send to end his redness.
stavros:
he is not you.
he is monster because he is powerful
without the interference of gods/
you are a monster
because you are powerful despite it.
iv. stick said
“you are tainted,
elektra”
so i put my savagery up for sale,
go back to bathing the streets with the blood of
unworthy men.
man calls
death itself,
so i answer
i always do.
look for an ocean of blood,
i am coming.
v. resurrection has a price.
the whole world knows i am not meant to be here.
half woman half death.
vi. lady lazarus,
i too eat men like air.
vii. im not
child / girlfriend / daughter / student / slave / victim / heartbreak
i am a
weapon.
i will always be someone’s
assassin.
viii. names have power
and my father left me a legacy
of rage.
what is a petty war compared
to the fire inside me?
ix. my name is elektra natchios
and not even the stars are safe in the sky.