Eris
“The pressure held their heads on a line, and they whirled and fought like wolves, and Eris, the Lady of Sorrow, was gladdened to watch them.”
-
Homer, Iliad 5. 590 ff
She wants to construct a light and more bearable version of herself,
a past apart from her own present discernment of history.
And so she gathers brushes and paints, a self-portrait off the wall.
A young woman is painting over a dark kingdom caught aflame.
Bone – White over wreckage.
White to rebuild what turned black before.
She feels her feet on the floor and her hands on the brush
and turns away from the fire behind her, wash over
indian – reds now because she feels herself burning up.
She dips her brush in blue.
Blue eyes and skin the color of a sky like a sky on any other day.
Water rises and sways, taking her dress and golden hairpins,
and then the brush, the painting over, the retelling of the story
all held in her brave, dissolving hands.
