Melancholy Babes

Thea Le Fevre

Communications Major—2nd Year

Memories are, to me, mists of sometimes Van Gogh brilliance, condensing and dispersing in the amniotic sac of my conscious mind. Recalling many specific details is, for me, to search for patches of darkness in the primeval sea. The depth of my spirituality began to emerge the year prior to my puberty. Before my mother was named ‘Jezebel,’ I had studied angelic lore from Catholicism, Judaism, and early Christianity. When I was eleven, my mother and I sat comfortably at the counter that separated our kitchen and living area. I was powerfully moved as she illuminated the meaningful metaphors behind angelic and demonic lore. As the conversation flowed, he walked into the room, listened for a moment, and “jokingly” claimed that I was one of his Seraphim. At that time, I did not know what a concubine was.

When I first lay eyes on the painting, I believed I felt a Big Bang of light, which tendril-led into a strange heat on the surface of my brain. I believe dopamine must have writhed, and then was, creating a state of being that was reverence. My fingertips may have felt cold though my chest felt illuminated as if illuminating were a verb that generated friction-heat. I felt tears that did not burn, but my recent descent to Kurnugi, into puberty, dissociated logic from my emotions. My heart quivered again, and the inner tips of my nostrils burned. I looked upward toward the top-most lengths of the bookshelves in O’Leary Junior High School and felt my throat close. I would later traverse the school day stoically effervescent, waiting to ask my mother what that, and this, experience was. I was twelve.

I can recall sitting on the newly cemented back porch step, looking out at the expanse of dirt that would someday become our back lawn. There were (possibly waist-high) wooden markers with orange plastic tape to indicate our property line. Our home had just been built, and our suburb was still relatively new. Past our backyard, I could see empty lots and a few wooden frames for soon-to-be houses. This was a time when the light of the world around me seemed brighter than it had before. My mother often shone, cheeks pronounced and lovely, dark chocolate eyes luminously framed with naturally long eyelashes. I often thought that I would look like her when my torso grew to meet the length of my arms. Puberty would soften the curves below my ribs, like my mother’s, while my waist, bum, and chest rounded. I was happy to look so much like her, even though my nose and chin were my father’s. She was standing maybe ten feet forward to my right, holding a cigarette while we talked about something I no longer remember.

After my period began, my mother often attempted to eloquently weave the symbolism and history of womanhood into our sparse private moments. “Our fertility as ‘woman’ is represented by our blood,” she told me that same year while we painted the entryway accent wall crimson.

I can see her still with her stray, curling strands loose from her ponytail in the back-porch light. It was growing into a full dark, and the smile she’d been radiating for weeks was distinctly pulled southward. There were tears in her eyes, and her left hand pressed against her heart while the right flicked her cigarette. I remember sitting down beside her, and she couldn’t put her arm around me. She said she was sorry while she wiped the tears from the left corners of her eyes and cheeks.

“Mommy’s not feeling so good today.” I immediately corrected her as she did us, with love and helpfulness in our hearts.

“Tonight, mom. It’s nighttime.”

She used the tips of her fingers to sweep beneath her lower lid.

“You’re right; it is nighttime, honey. Thank you for correcting me.”

I felt confused. This is where the mist disseminates into the amniotic fluid. I believe I remember looking at her crying face from a different angle; knees pulled to her chest, the cigarette still in her right hand as her neck rested closer to her kneecaps. I think I remember her saying, “He did this just to take away my happiness.” I asked what had caused the specific happiness he had taken from her because you can have happiness from different things.

“The happiness from the new house.” She used her palm to wipe her tears this time. I believe she may have added, “And from everything else.” I felt sadness deep inside me, and I started to cry, too. I sat in the dirt a few feet from the concrete with my legs curled to my chest. She held me while I cried for a while, but then she needed to cry separately.

I believe it was the ensuing weeks when I began to notice my eyes falling down to her bum cheek, trying to remember where exactly she had pointed. My mother was a Registered Nurse, a consistent flow of health facts. She could tell me exactly what was happening in the cells beneath my skin when I accidentally got a paper cut. It was exciting to learn that my body could do something, like twist my leg behind the other in a new way while I stretched my torso to the right, and she could tell me which exact muscles I was using. Sometimes she could even tell me if I used them often enough, and if not how to stretch to make them stronger. I understood very clearly that smoking caused cancer, and she would often explain what symptoms she experienced because of her smoking. Shortness of breath was her largest concern. I knew that the tar from the cigarette accumulated in your lungs and fostered a multitude of diseases.

She explained addiction very well to me, and it seemed an extremely frightening thing. I was often concerned about her, but there was nothing I could do. Interventions were not helpful. The self-appointed Godhead, my stepfather, did not seem to consider addiction frightening in the least when my mother was not around. He considered it an easy thing to deal with, lumping it into the same category as ‘Marijuana Madness,’ which I later learned a considerable amount about. He always emphasized that medical terminology made something seem perturbing when it really wasn’t. In fact, human beings understanding the world to such a degree could be dangerous to our own health. Knowledge was what he told me to be afraid of, not addiction.

The fact that my mother was a smoker was the only part of her personality that seemed to raise questions in others. She did not drink, of course, she did not do drugs, she was deeply faithful, entirely devoted to her children, and her career allowed her to heal “Every day, all day!" The majority of her work had, in fact, been spent caring for senior citizens because “We should always respect our elders.” If everyone respected their elders and had the financial means to care for them, she wouldn’t be needed. “But, unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way.” I would find out when I was older.

I struggle to recall my age or exact location when I discovered that my mother had a tattoo. To discover that she had a tattoo, which she disapproved of and of which my biological father had many, was a surprising new dimension to her person. It was difficult and sometimes angering to fathom. Why did she tell me that tattoos were barbaric; an ancient art form that is no longer necessary in present-day society? I couldn’t fit all of the goodness in my mother to the image that tattoos represented for me. I remember within relatively the same period, sitting on the same cement back porch step, with a strange surprise trying to configure this new piece of information into my understanding of the world.

From my lessons on womanhood, I knew that she was an exemplary female. Cursing was not acceptable; she knew very well how to sew incredibly complicated patterns. She understood the meaning of resources and how to manage them; her faith was my guiding post. She was a feminist and believed in the purity of waiting until marriage even though she hadn’t. I understood very well how the accident that I was became the joy of our family. She and my father had been in a relationship for two years before I was created. She waited another two years until she was eighteen, and then they were married. My biological father surprised both of my highly religious families by going to jail and ending their union. She had done what she was supposed to do to take care of me; she loved and supported me always.

So why did she have a tattoo of a dragon? In the dining room, she tried to make it a joke. She pretended to gasp, placing her hand firmly in front of her mouth with her eyes wide. “And on her bum, too!”

I smiled and did the same thing. We could laugh at what other people might say, but we understood each other.

Within the same year, my high-school-aged uncle, Michael, moved into our basement. My mother’s mother had passed a little over a year before, and my uncle needed “a feminine touch.” As the oldest of three siblings in my mother and then my father’s family, it was nice to spend time with someone bigger. I felt looked after in a new way, but still free to have fun. For a long while, it was very nice.

Interestingly, he had a fascination with dragons. Even his silk, button-up shirts had blue and red dragons breathing fire. He loved pictures of them and even painted a ceramic dragon at one point that remained a prize on the higher shelves of our bookcase. I never truly understood why dragons were so incredible to him; I had grown out of my interest in elves and fairies. A couple of years later, he equated his enthusiasm for dragons with mine for vampires. A couple of years later, the Godhead was the best friend I could not resist.

The thinness of my surface reality was condensation clinging to the titanium that covered my ovaries. Only my ovaries contained my true emotions; there was nowhere else safe enough for them to go. The facts of my surface reality were Betty Crocker’s Hamburger Helper pasta noodles creating macaroni art of long highways and short statements that were my thoughts. Fourteen-year-olds didn’t have deep emotions, which is why I can only describe what happened as this.

My mother, Uncle Michael, and three siblings decided to visit my Aunt Danielle in a close-by town. While returning, a truck with stone statues attached as cargo crossed the grass patch between the opposite highways and struck the driver’s side of the van. It flipped once, possibly several times. My younger brother, A.J., was the only survivor. The Godhead assumed custody of him, and I was moved into my biological father’s house. We still lived in the same small town, and it only took a few minutes to drive to my brother and stepfather's house. At the time, I was too confused about The Godhead and I’s special relationship to consider not visiting. I stayed the night with them once a week and told myself nothing was wrong. He and I were just different than everyone else. This pain was because of the accident; it was because there was something wrong with me. If it wasn’t, then I would lose another family member. How could I lose my little brother A.J. when I’d already lost Ryker? Alexis? Mom? Uncle Michael? I couldn’t.

In my ensuing fifteenth or sixteenth year, the depths of my thoughts were so neglected I could subconsciously cherish my own voice. The Godhead flippantly commanded I encircle him – he probably meant with my thighs – and chant “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh.” I mimicked some form of lighthearted disgust or made a mockingly aggressive jest, which was our familiar script. These ‘humorous’ displays of what he considered masculine power used to cause my heart to contort closer to emotional death while I ‘playfully’ responded. On a good day, I could make a ‘joke’ about his delusions of grandeur or something else slicing of the like. At other times – the ones I associate with black or maroon velvet - the line between him ‘goofing around’ and revealing rage, anger, disgust, or contempt became the hot, pulsing dark electric veil I could not lift.

The wall framing the exit from the living area into the entry room looked like red paint that had been scorched, and the acrid black blended into dull crimson. The walls lacked angularity when brushed with the pads of your fingers, but shaped the room softly. It reminded me of a three-sided picture frame submissively accepting light without sacrificing structure. This particular shade of crimson was chosen for the accent wall by my mother in another house during another time. It was replicated here, in this house, to continue the appearance that my stepfather grieved. I wonder now if she had known of Inanna if she considered sacrificing her menstrual blood under the moon as a gift to the Queen of Heaven and the God of Agriculture? How else, in modern times, are we to connect with the strength of the feminine so we may survive ancient crimes?

Later, in the house with the second crimson wall, I would look during the night into the shadowed, unlit entry room that led toward the bedrooms. I imagined this second crimson wall shrank from pronouncing its angularity because it did not want to admit that it was secretly highlighting the darkness you may find when passing beneath its subtly ovular frame, emphasizing that entering darkness renders you vulnerable.

The soft yellow lighting in the living room seemed to serve as a visual representation of the pounds of weight the stale cigarette smoke-filled air applied to my chest, shoulders, stomach, and the backs of my knees. The room was so often clouded with smoke that I felt—when my consciousness was flattened—there was no way to escape from the tendrils caressing behind my knees. As if the dull pearl weight of hanging smoke pressing against every area of my skin was him. As if he were saying, ‘not only do I control you, not only do I control your body; every exhale I emit will wrap and stain your skin just as uncontrollably as I do.’

The majority of the time spent in one another’s company occurred in the living room or his room, watching television and drinking. He had many methods to manipulate me out of my clothing, but during the worst times, he simply commanded it. I was required to remain at least semi–nude, and there were many lies I could tell myself to ensure that this remained as comfortable and normal as possible.

Ensconced intermittently within regular time were the minutes, hours, days when I must breathe the smog of panicked acceptance that I was his concubine, and this was his harem. The windows were permanently closed, and the living room would skulk beneath the pearl weight, lights dimmed to enhance the television. Rarely, in moments I tiptoed through with a practiced apathy, I was permitted to cover myself in clothing or a blanket. He imposed his exhales as if they were a balm to my skin; I was required to stretch the fabric away from myself so that he could blow the smoke under the cloth, staining my pores. I then replaced the fabric tightly to hold his exhales while I covered my body.

The only way to contribute to the air I breathed was to smoke alongside him. Yet my chain-smoking one or two packs per day never challenged his three or four. This was my place in the world; he explained to me, I was one-third to his three-fourths. I was woman.

He called himself “Ramses the Great.” I admitted that my recollection could not summon who this was. The right corner of his nose indented, coursing cold tap water through my sternum. I was not currently in his peripheral. Molten tar melted through my liver into my Parietal pleura, sloughing toward my T10. My skin shook along with my heart; his darkened eyes slanted toward me as a threat.

I remained seated on the deep green living room couch, the farthest cushion to the left - the seat nearest him. Later I breathed, tears glimpsing the surface of my eyes, cognizant that I was blessed that it was a couch I sat on. I may have been forced to remain on a mat at his feet. The practice of keeping my tongue between my teeth, perhaps to nip it into a pitchfork, while my lips remained silkily closed saved my seat. When permitted to research the name, I lifted several inches from the cushion with my quivering arms and curved toward him my slim buttocks, thighs, torso, chest, and neck; Platysma muscles clenched. His lids sunk as he pulled his chin toward his arguably infallible chest. As I continued to hold the position, his eyes widened to analyze me. It felt as if my inner molten terror had developed its own kinetic energy. Before the second could be split, he nodded recognition of my meaning. Beneath the flesh of my breast, inner elbows and eyes, innumerable unborn simmering fingers brushed through my endocrine toward the surface as I propelled shakily from the couch.

Near the end of my years in the harem, my quarters were outfitted in a bookshelf and my twin bunk bed from the times when it began. I don’t know if this particular part of the bunk bed had been mine or my little sisters, but we switched often enough the memories could be in either one. The other sibling surviving, my younger brother, and toddler brother now deceased, had also used these bunk beds. The boards were broken on the bed frame, causing my mattress to concave in the middle. It took years for the Godhead to fix because I could “just share [his] bed” if I wanted to. The family’s old clothes were preserved in garbage bags slouched on top of one another in my closet and tossed disheveled against the closet doors once it was overfilled.

Ramses the Great shared—in minuscule portions—the wealth of Egypt with his concubines. He evolved further than most pharaohs did by dedicating a small temple at Abu Simbel to his first Queen, Nefertari. The Godhead put their headstones in the local graveyard. A dowry was passed from father to pharaoh; he, my brother, and I were given financial compensation from the wrongful death case. The pharaoh gifted his property with abundant meals. The self-appointed Godhead allowed me to cook frozen taquitos and pizza rolls.

Often, I could not refuse the proffered barley water, liquor, or wine. While in this hell, I linked just birthed, partial halved thoughts into others; tightening my medial head gastronomic muscles, and sometimes squeezing my mammary gland lobules, until I felt and saw the skin distorted by my pressure. The Ramses II, who lived 1279–13 BCE, understood my womb for your resources. Ramses III also learned; he called Astarte and Anath his shield.

Between my legs exists the warmth of heaven and the omnipotence in natural childbirth. Creation in the earthly, profane to those who cow behind histories patriarch because their flesh does so little. Our feminine is the divine creator and our hands the takers of lives. Before Zeus and Hades, there was the Sumerian Inanna “Queen of Heaven and Earth” and her sister Erishkegal “Queen of the Underworld.” In Akkadian, her name was changed to Ishtar, though the myth remained the same.

I was seventeen. I had been starving my body for spite, infertility, and control consistently since the age of fourteen. The outward burning from my stomach was kinetic energy orating through minuscule slices of high-frequency radio waves. These waves pulsed peach-pink and soft red through the strange glimpses I saw of my room. The carpeted floor beneath my knees and shins, the queen-sized bed to my right, memory chest topped with a large mirror to my front, and the window illuminating what seemed a soft glow on each surface.

My vessel, myself, felt hot as my limbs shook from the inside of me. My breaths were vibrations, my sweat libations, the balls of my eyes themselves shook left to right. This right-side tense arm felt not my own with few connecting threads I could use to command it. This did stretch over my womb from elbow to wrist. I sensed my ovaries while light burst in different eves of my mind, along with my slashes of breaths. My head lolled fluidly to the salt-water crests. I felt the fist clench nausea in my stomach, aware as my heart constricted. It gyved heat as I vocalized the reverse cataract of air starkly becoming once again aware of the millions of melancholy children - babes to be precise - in my womb. My mind was Nammu and I rejected Ninmah. I had no control over the clay or its molders. Nor was I of the family Salmonidae, who could spawn eggs beneath gravel preciously sifted in the gray-green aura of their birth-stream-bed.

Minutes of normality merged the chasm between social existence and my own. I made a friend, one friend, who’s strange interest in spending time with me was the equivalent of Hercules exchanging his soul for the life of Meg. I found a breath in pursuing some of my own interests for the first time, and in return, I nurtured him closer to warmth.

Either a little before a year or a slight-to-large-little after the year, I rejected Ninmah, my close friend, and I spent our evening at Olive Garden. We frequently took pleasure in dressing well to fan our egos, and I enjoyed, almost exclusively, Italian food. This was before our taste elevated to Romano’s Macaroni Grill, prior its astounding change in management, and eventual replacement with Mickey Ray’s Roadhouse BBQ. I remember little aside from my order of salmon. I had always been averse to any type of seafood, but my breast glittered beneath my chest plate. This was time for an experiment.

We were well known at this restaurant location, usually arriving in the same window of time each visit and had complimented the chef on more than one occasion. I feel, though I do not recall with exactitude, that my friend struck a conversation about the mating habits of salmon after our order was taken. I felt the pain sever the northern lights beneath my breastbone as I smiled and bent to sip from the straw in my glass of water. I imagined I saw the anger slide through his eyes into the ensuing crispness of his polite movements. Uncertain, I felt lightheaded as I continued to smile and converse while the weight of happiness lost physically rebuked my heart for its attempt. We tested and tasted other topics along with our bread and olive oil, awaiting our entrees. In good time, the dish was gracefully placed in front of me by our server. I prepared my utensils, warmth in my eyes for the grandeur we were treated with. I feel I did not have the heart to admit that I regretted this choice and wished I could order another dish. My friend was now relaxed and, I felt, continuing our dialogue for the sake of ritual. Was I excited to try this new dish? Did I think I could possibly like fish?

I remember the texture of the meat being strange. Though the skin was breaded, the seasoning of herbs gentle and well mixed, I could not forget that it was skin. I was grinding the flesh that had smoothed over my inaccurately imagined salmon’s internal organs; the sac of eggs not yet strewn among the silty pebbles to await their male fertilizer.

I think I may have rested my wrists on the table’s edge after the first bite, spine straight, preparing for the second. My nose may have demonstrated my surface emotions more exaggeratedly than I had hoped. I do remember that at some point, the server was polite, possibly disappointed, asking if I had enjoyed my dish. I believe it was evident that I had not though I attempted to mask this with warmth. I do remember an apology and the server returning to request I proffer any recommendations for the chef in case I ordered this dish again. I remember that I said I just do not like fish, but thank you.

Two years later, I was a base in a war zone protected only by my emotional barriers, staying at a residential mental health facility in Santa Monica, California. As a group, monitored by a staff member, we were able to visit the Getty Museum. My wallowing soles sought soul. My emotional barriers caressed the surfaces of hermeneutics embodied in oil. My heart sifted through the gravel of brush strokes. I read the plaque, “Christ and the Adulteress” by “Valentin de Boulogne” 1591 – 1632. Christ said, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” I believe I noticed her breasts first, but now my memory is viscerally connected to the disjointed moments inspired only by the painting and my heart clutching itself and cringing inward. The light peaked from her throat, breasts to his face, arm to a man’s hand holding back another. Her face was darkened and bent into shades.

I feel more than remember that my breath stuttered within my throat, and my chest lifted twice within a second. I often burned with the shame and self-loathing of the slut who tempted the husband from the wife. Within the year, I bought a print copy from an online store. I looked at it often, sitting at the table in the unlit living area of my weekly rental studio apartment with the kitchen light yellowing the air behind me. I followed pure crème of skin, the unfocused subtlety simultaneously caressing my emotional barriers toward its milky focal points.

Often my tears felt like liquefied branding irons burning through the underbellies of my lower palpebral. Causing my mandible to strain left from the center of my maxilla as I took in air, frantically expanding my thoracic diaphragm. My breast burned, and my feet jarred upward while they violently shook. Two of my toes cramped, released, three others tightened, released; my muscles were a pit of shifting tectonic plates. The caput lateral head of my gastrocnemius muscle clenched simultaneous cacophonies with my caput medial head, spasmodically injecting a high cello F note. I felt a nonexistent force but my right rib cage. I was nineteen.

I read The Red Tent at age twenty-two, discovering my soul at my fingertips. (I felt as if I were Rachel, he was Jacob, and I believe it is possible that my memory will not allow me to recall references to this story. Yet I questioned myself; fear of being disbelieved often leads to denial.) I sucked it out and maneuvered to studying ancient Egyptian culture through historically accurate fiction. To be a concubine of a pharaoh was an honor…the familiar wriggling of my larva-thoughts supervened. Coils in my belly, melancholy babes disturbing my peace; was it truly my natural role to serve? Woman was born with God’s blessings; the healthful need to make love, the inability to control impregnation, and the natural desire to enslave oneself in love to the unexpected gift. Weather, life, and childbirth were just as violently inconsistent as an abusive spouse. Was it the tools of mankind, truly, that freed woman from slavery? Did I exist to serve, only to be freed by the will of man?

Nearly a year later, I expanded to nonfiction far beyond Egypt; God is global. I pressed my emotional fingers against my flesh, feeling my melancholy babes return the gesture. We would discover together if man were God, if God was primarily masculine.

There was Isis, Isis, Inanna, Inanna, Ishtar, Ishtar, Astarte, Astarte, Anath, 'Ashtoreth, Asherah, Asherah… Mary as Venus molded into a ceramic, which graces the top of my cupboards. The simple, brown wooden cross necklace I purchased at a Catholic store.

Osiris, Osiris, Dumuzi, Dumuzi, Tammuz, Tammuz, Haad, Baal, Father Shunem, El-Shadday. Gabriel, Elizabeth, Gabriel, Mary, Jesus Christ, the daughter of Phanuel from the tribe of Asher. Asherah. Did the Jewish people discover the necessity of separating the clean and unclean to avoid disease and mistakenly divide woman from man? Did the Biblical figures in Judges 10:6 retain their household idols, not to reject Yahweh, but to reject patriarchy? Was Jesus Christ a feminist?

I no longer believe in a purely masculine God, for there is a feminine half of the earth! God has shown us the fruit of the spirit through Its grace, and one cannot grow those fruits when lowering another human being. Lowering because of their gender; lowering because of their sexual identities. God created the world in its image. Every masculine has a feminine. Every heart has a soul. I am not innately evil. I do not believe that Eve came from Adam’s rib. I have faith in Jesus Christ. The creation of the earth did come through woman, but God has no sex. Our humanly consistent spiritual, emotional, and mental evolution leads us closer to God. God leads us to ourselves first, and it second. Remember your own nature. I know mine.

God worked through my mother, even after her passing. My search for the truth behind Christ’s movement led me back to the idols worshiped during the time of Genesis. El, Baal, Asherah…god’s and goddesses symbolizing the emotional, spiritual, and intellectual progression of humanity in its purest form. Among the primeval sea of historic cults and cultures, I remembered the dragon. Dragons. That tattoo I felt betrayed to discover she had, guided me to one of the most evolutionarily youthful truths, the Epic of Creation. Now I am free to cradle history though my ovaries are still protected with titanium, and I know Tiamat.

Tiamat, Tihamtu, Baau, “Bis-Bis, Hubar, Mummu-Tiamat, Omorca, Omoroka, Tamtu, Tauthe, Tehom, Thalass, Thalatth, Thamte, Thlavatth, Tiawath, Tisalat, Ummukhubar…“The goddess of the primeval sea visualized as a dragon and representing the forces of chaos and evil, Tiamat is the saltwater personified.” She was “300 miles long, with a mouth 10 feet wide.” One hundred feet in width, “she moved with undulations six miles high.”

Her husband Apsu, referred to as “the sweet water,” was “the first one, their begetter and maker Tiamat, who bore them all.” Between them, they bore all of the God’s into creation. The earth and human beings had not yet been formed. “The gods of that generation would meet together and disturb Tiamat, and their clamor reverberated. They stirred up Tiamat’s belly; they were annoying her by playing inside Anduruna. Apsu could not quell their noise, and Tiamat became mute before them; However grievous their behavior to her, however, bad their ways, she would indulge them.” Apsu did not have the same level of nurturing patience as she. He came before her requesting to destroy, kill the rambunctious gods so that he could rest peacefully at night. “When Tiamat heard this, She was furious and shouted at her lover; She shouted dreadfully and was beside herself with rage, But then suppressed the evil in her belly. ‘How could we allow what we ourselves created to perish? Even though their ways are so grievous, we should bear it patiently.’”

Apsu then made plans without her to murder the disturbing gods. Ea discovered his plot and slew Apsu. “Then [Ea] rested very quietly inside his private quarters And named them Apsu.” A short time later, “inside Apsu, Marduk was created.” As Marduk grew in strength and power as a god, “he fashioned dust and made the whirlwind carry it; He made the flood-wave and stirred up Tiamat. Tiamat was stirred up and heaved restlessly day and night.” The “flood-wave,” sent to a single woman whose husband’s life was taken in retaliation, possibly incriminating her and leaving her unclaimed. Her salted oceanic mass must have heaved and crested; her tears fierce, her intellect disturbed. She bore emotional tension between her broken trust with Apsu and her rage at the god born from his metaphorical corpse.

The gods, sons of Tiamat and Apsu, were greatly disturbed by the “flood-wave.” “They addressed Tiamat their mother, saying, ‘Because they slew Apsu, your lover and You did not go to his side but sat mute, He has created the four, fearful winds To stir up your belly on purpose, and we simply cannot sleep! Was your lover Apsu not your heart...Are you not a mother...Don’t you love us?” She lost control of her ability to calm the coils within her belly.

“They crowded round and rallied beside Tiamat. They were fierce, scheming restlessly night and day. They were working up to war, growling, and raging. They convened a council and created conflict.” Weapons were acquired, an army amassed, and Marduk discovered their preparations for war. Marduk accumulated weapons with which to face her in battle. They were gifts from his father Anu, “the four winds so that no part of her could escape.” He then created “the imhullu-wind (evil wind), the tempest, the whirlwind…the unfaceable facing wind.” There were seven of them total; seven men to support his confrontation? The seven sins? His great handheld weapon was the “flood-weapon”; could this not be the accusations that evoke tears? He “mounted the frightful, unfaceable storm-chariot”; these evil winds carrying his feet toward her door. Let us not forget El – the storm god who resembled Yahweh. His accompanying army was described with, “Their lips…drawn back, their teeth carried poison.” Were these the piercing words with which to smite her? When he faced Tiamat, “In his lips, he gripped a spell”; was this the declaration of her ‘crime’?

Marduk and Tiamat conversed while facing one another, representing the war between them. “Tiamat cast her spell. She did not even turn her neck. In her lips she was holding falsehood, lies, (wheedling).

‘[How powerful is] your attacking force, O lord of the gods! The whole assembly of them has gathered at your place!’”. It reminds me of a woman encircled by a throng of men in Jerusalem, eyes glowing hot with hatred. Accusations, screaming, strikes of lightning; Zeus disintegrating into sand to poor through the keyhole of her invisible door. Coerced, she weeps untruths as they rip at her clothing. Through the mass of dusty, sweat-streaked limbs, there is one gap where the light reflects the stones of a road ascending uphill: holy.

She propels toward the light as unseen sinewy arms scrape her soft, now bare, waist, and a multitude of hands are pulling the top layer of her flesh in all directions. Small stones have begun to strike her neck and face. These multitudes of differently shaped, calloused, aged, dry-with-flecked-flesh hands will be repeated several millennia later in magazines like Penthouse. Only then, the men will have learned to control her environment with tools and a different set of social norms so that she can act as if she enjoys this. Her lunge toward the gap is closed by ‘woman’ with loathing straining the muscles of her hands into rigor mortis, as does her survivalist’s loyalty to her household’s patriarch.

Now the writhing victim is shaking with rage along with terror. Does she challenge the imhullu-wind, “‘How powerful is your force in numbers truly?" “The whole assembly of them has gathered at your place!”’ Grinding teeth, her hips opposing by jutting infernally away, until the stones smite enough pain, she can no longer control her limbs.

I see that “the Lord” Marduk “spread his net and made it encircle her; to her face, he dispatched the imhullu-wind, which had been behind: Tiamat opened her mouth to swallow it, And he forced in the imhullu-wind so that she could not close her lips. Fierce winds distended her belly; Her insides were constipated, and she stretched her mouth wide. He shot an arrow which pierced her belly, Splits her down the middle and slit her heart, Vanquished her and extinguished her life.” After this, he only captures and imprisons the gods, who provoked her into war, kills her second lover, “proclaimed the submissive foe his slave,” and returns to the corpse of Tiamat.

Once he has trampled her corpse and smashed her skull, he used her body to create the world. “He divided the monstrous shape and created marvels (from it). He sliced her in half like a fish for drying: Half of her he put up to roof the sky…Opened up gates in both ribs…With her liver, he located the heights; He made the crescent moon appear…He placed her head, heaped up…Opened up springs: water gushed out. He opened the Euphrates and the Tigris from her eyes, closed her nostrils…He piled up clear-cut mountains from her udder, Bored water holes to drain off the catch water. He laid her tail across, tied it fast as the cosmic bond…He set her thigh to make fast the sky, with half of her he made a roof; he fixed the earth.”

My memories are often, still, mists of sometimes Van Gough brilliance, though now I recognize this mist as the souls within my melancholy babes. They continue to float beneath my skin, often tracing their fingers across my frontal cortex or stimulating my (part of the brain that causes anxiety). My reality is often confused within the depths of my slightly agoraphobic, introverted self. My self is burgeoning like the tree of knowledge; Adam already ruminates on the flavor of the fruit. I, myself, have not touched it yet.

Melancholy often leads to simple decisions that the complexity of experience enriches until the memory is sodden. Around the age of nineteen, I was quietly drawn to a craft store named Michael's. This place was not one I had a reason to visit; it held nothing I thought I could want. Grief softened my voice and lips, my nurturing udders utterly silenced. I believe I prayed to God as if he existed. I didn’t often reach toward the Father of my childhood, but prayers in infant form were the sometimes sleuths of my thoughts. Popular culture, literature, often framed young adult plots with this seeking for that answer. I felt cliché, myself. Recognizing this cliché separated me from the grief. My heart was often over-saturated with anxiety, dripping the excess into my diaphragm. Now my diaphragm was frozen; the grief had to be allowed.

I wandered down the aisles, trying not to separate myself from this feeling by narrating how typical this was. The Godhead knew what typical displays of grief were; outsiders may judge any display as false and attack you for it. I knew how they would view this. Whoever his ‘they’ were. I never truly knew.

And then there was the print, displayed in a metal shelf mid-aisle, on top of other cardboard-reinforced prints leaning toward passing viewers. I pressed it, and the others piled behind, backward. I feel as if I remember the fluorescent lights catching a spot on the plastic to burn my right eye. I wonder now what this means. Could it have represented the fire of hell? Or perhaps the release of my emotions was a symbolic glance into the divinity of Ra? I wondered if these beautiful moments of coincidence exist because the human mind can only create paths from lines already drawn. Is the plastic covering a print, or another item, naturally humanities favored choice because we reflect the universe we exist in through every tool, every channel of humankind's creation? Now, when I consider this moment, I feel the warmth of that reflected fluorescent light as a gift. An annoyance then is an enlightened spiritual symbol now, the beauty in God’s grace.

At the time, the dark aura surrounding my heart mingled with the muted hues of the river she lay in. My eye sensually immersed itself in the pale perfection of her upturned chin and cheek. There flowed holy seeming perfection tendril-ing toward her forehead into her laterally drifting tan-gold hair. I first recognized the ropes binding her wrists and hands viscerally, feeling a shock of light in mind. My heart rate increased. I am now unsure if I recognized she was dead, then, but I did think of Ophelia. Oddly, I could never remember what I had read about Ophelia, but I often found her name melded into my grief and emotional pain. It came to me then, and I can only guess that I had previously seen the painting of Ophelia and possibly this one in comparison. For me, however, it felt like the first sighting. Like the first time, you transcended your palms, fingers, touched into the water, and knew the sensation of it. Years later, I could identify the painting in most places. “The Christian Martyr Drowned in the Tiber During the Reign of Diocletian” 1853 by Hippolyte Paul Delaroche.

My thoughts often connect in ways that turn my mind back toward the thickly entwined branches that wove a dank, dark space above Frost’s “Long Road.” I have tentatively decided that The Godhead should now be called Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus—Diocles to keep it short. The Western Roman Empire has now decayed, and I have allowed the materials to degrade into the earth. It is not the red Georgian soil of Tara; I am no longer Scarlett O’Hara. It is also not the clay with which Ninmah fashioned humanity because I am not a slave. I do worry about the modern-day Bush triumvirate, but Chris Christie worries me more. I accept and love that my mother was named Jezebel; this was no insult. I will never chant “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh” because I am not Jewish. I will nourish my melancholy babes until someday they are no longer memories; each one will be a cherished possible gift - no more titanium.