Niobe Aftermath by Sonya Taaffe

A woman who cries turns into stone. Who never cries, dries up: sand, barren throat where rivers used to run. So many tears cried out for you, I thought dry salt would rustle in my veins, grit my eyes like a leftover dream; fragile remembrance of something before crying. Who dissolved, seeped to stone? Your tears never ate you away, corrosive, caustic, never melted you to some new and alien shape, rock wind-sculpted in the desert drought. I cry: I am not stone. Nor acid; and neither one of us, from ever looking back, a pillar of salt.


Sonya Taaffe has a confirmed addiction to folklore, mythology, and dead languages. A respectable amount of her work has recently been collected in Singing Innocence and Experience and Postcards from the Province of Hyphens (Prime Books). She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Classics at Yale University and has trouble talking about herself in the third person.


Image © Emily Tolson