Antiope Bound, Unbound // Donna Frazier

[iatrogenicmyth]

"Antiope was long held prisoner, but one day
her chains fell off of their own accord."

--New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology

Handprints on my skin. I've forgotten how to pray.
Count the feathers of a bird, count the ways
you know to cry. The men they say are gods
are old drunk fools.

Mother appears to me in a scrim of yellow cotton.
I see she has the body of a goddess,
curved and wide, as father stands back, admiring her.
I am naked, she says. There is nothing
they can take from me now.

I wake again bound,
knees and elbows the tipped hinge of hips;
what looks like collapse is a tightening coil,
muscle on bone angled like wood for fire.

But in a wind of dust and camphor
a voice blows through me.
Torn words, then words of bright green flame,
sun's copper burning and these chains:
a memory of sons, my body broken, a yellow dress.
I empty my silence
even of rage.

They say I escaped
as if by miracle, but I will tell you the miracle:
I cut my throat open.
I set myself free.