Elektra to Antigone
Maya Chhabra
I am your heart yanked out of your chest
Screaming in the summer air
Words are not broken enough to hold me
Maiden descending unattended
To the swift consummation of your death
I too am rigid and untouched
But purity twists me under its hammer like steel
I was meant to join in love
Shorn hair and wails and parade of grief
A little dust on a rotting body again again
They will not kill me for it they will only change me
They will only make me hate
I trail bitterness I stink of ash
The brother I saved wants me to shut up
Years of thrusting my heart in their faces
I forgot how to veil it in flesh
He rescued me but I envy you
Your deed an arrow from the fatal bow of your soul
Mine an inharmonious crowing and then barren life
Cover lightly o bride of death
The straight-backed corpse I might have been
Maya Chhabra lives and works in New York City. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Mythic Delirium and Through the Gate, and her reviews have appeared in Strange Horizons and Publishers Weekly. Her novelette Walking on Knives, a reworking of “The Little Mermaid”, is available as a standalone ebook published by Less Than Three Press.