“She Held a Dove Whose Tail Survives”: Self-Portrait as the Acropolis

I want to be the marbled owl—the sacred bird—sleepless and with remarkable eyesight—that steady bird, which nests in the cracks of rock surrounding the sanctuary of the Goddess. Ancient neighborhoods I fly over at night—wing by wing—each city built upon—dependent upon—the silence of an older city buried beneath it. Is there even such a thing as land? Fragmentation is our anthem. Sun-dried bricks covered with packed earth form a brief wall above a paved mosaic floor. That would be my soul—if it could have a name. Small sacrifices to the underworld. The surprise of an abandoned underground well still gurgling. Funerary vessels. Terra-cotta covered with figurines of animals and birds. A kind of heart given to another to store cool water. My opened palm filled with bone pins, bone needles. A glass perfume bottle that somehow survived. I am red. Eros pulls me by the hand. More birds. Who is the sacrifice, my body or my mind? Small terra-cotta altars. The bones of a piglet. Dark figures on a light background. The Sanctuary of the Nymph. A baby’s rattle shaped like a hare. Our love was so beautiful, every member of our family came up to bathe in the spring together the night before our wedding. My heart a spindle whorl, a fine clay weight, still spinning—faster and faster—within the abandoned sanctuary. My altar. My ever-flowing sacred spring. My door in. My gate out. God of Healing. God of Health. His wife and all his children. My black marble face inlaid with glass eyes. All the faces of the statues are melting. Magic sphere. Your spear tipped with magic—Protectress. All your nymphs stand, shoulder to shoulder, holding hands. Myrtle wreaths carved into a wall surrounding our names. All this happily lost so that in the future—now—they can be regained. Clay shards. Iron blades. Fragments of gods. And the most efficacious gift of all: not to take history seriously. Each of us broken, each of us emanating an earlier glory. A procession of winged selves parading constantly throughout our cells—regardless of the red-dark harbor. Treasure box in the sanctuary inscribed with languages we do not need to know to understand. Our silence suspicious of anyone who believes they know where or when history began (it has yet to begin). Bronze axes, chisels, hammers, files. A mirror. Time claims all else. Countless warriors and charioteers. I see children and women running. A silver coin depicting a wheel. Daughter of God. Daughter of the Sea—born wearing a full suit of armor. Protectress of the City. Two lions maul a bull. A lioness mangles a young calf. I stand before you holding a pomegranate. My cape is woven with the small slender bodies of hundreds of baby-blue snakes, its fringe composed of all their minuscule heads—undulating and hissing. The Earth and Sky still like to make love. They still give birth to giants. A fruit, a flower, a wreath, or a bird—usually a dove. A bracelet in the shape of a snake on Her left arm. Tamer of horses. Winged Sphynx. The soft pink moonlight. And the little girls—all the brown little girls—whose bodies we buried in the Great Pit, which we dug by hand, hurriedly—for protection—the moment we looked to the horizon—the second we saw them coming.