our_magic_place; Old Prompt Set 22 - "Forbidden Fruit"
Author's Notes: For some reason, I decided to answer this response in the form of a sonnet. I think discussion of original sin and the fall of Man sort of warrants that, because I consider it a fairly classical/Miltonesque topic.
I also noticed that this prompt was from last August, but not until I'd already had it written. See, I got confused and clicked on the giant "prompts" tag on the main community when, really, all the prompts are in a new community now and are meant to be done day by day. Oh well. It's very hard to write a sonnet, for me at least, so I'm using it anyway.
Any similarities to a Dr. Suess story are purely unintentional and are all his fault for ruining the seriousness of rhyming poetry.
The idea of this is, roughly, that some medieval and/or Elizabethan poet writes a sonnet about why Athena doesn't go to Church anymore. Kind of. That's why I tried to do it in the more classical sense instead of a modern, unrhyming sonnet that would've let me use less awkward language.
Thanks to the players of eternityticking and thisway_comes for being sounding boards, encouraging a strange idea, and giving me valuable feedback.
This note is now longer than the prompt response. I win.
The Fall
Stained glass illuminated by the sun;
The image of an apple on a tree.
Eve, frozen in time, looks up, sin begun.
Beside her the serpent uncoils with glee.
The wisdom goddess stands before the glass,
Her golden eyes survey the ancient scene.
A smiling priest approaches her and asks:
"From this story, what do you, a woman, glean?"
She: "I have tasted the sweet fruit of knowledge
And have thus sinned against your single god,
But man, as well, rests on the razor's edge,
Yet on woman's back alone do you trod."
A woman first, the bright goddess of war,
From that day forward, seeks our God no more.