A Trilogy of Mythic Femininity

Venice beneath me

A whore in theory, I call myself—but never in practice, I swear it. I am two women entirely. An amphibian if you will. I’m both the innocent land locked society wife resigned to a stable albeit isolated island—its bones constructed from my good pedigree and classical education. I waste away my days envying the young whorish courtesan and her control over the men in my life and beneath me the bones rot, likened to the decaying stakes under Venice. I am also the beautiful seductress, an enchanting siren fully submerged in the water of the damned, peacocking my overflowing and decadent bounty before the prudent wife whilst waiting tentatively for her city to sink so I may devour her.

I am the revered Madonna—pure, virtuous, and nurturing. An innocent fawn, a graceful swan, and a pious queen sunbathing on the lawn before the temple of maturity. But when no sleuthful eyes gaze upon me, I adorn myself with the raiment of new personhood. Or is it more truthful that I cast off my daytime disguise? Either way, I succumb to my harlotress form, over-sexuality, brattiness, and masochistic desire. The only touchstone traded between the two is the Lady Submission—she is the mother of both and the midpoint where they exchange their slippers.

The wife and courtesan who possess my tormented being are the wretched manifestations of my child self feigning adulthood—and my soon-to-be adult self, regressing into childlikeness. How perverted is that? That in my mind, the child is the harlot, and the wife the Madonna. The child, me, me as a child, is the sexual being and my future womanhood the Madonna.

When I was a girl and men loved me—or at least fantasized about loving me, claiming my infantile statehood as their own, they loved that I was a child and all that came with my childlikeness, but when I behaved like woman I was quickly cast aside. In my later relations with reasonably aged boys, they adored my being an emerging woman and the voluptuous breasts I shared with their digital conquests and likewise the mothers who conceived them.

The Sirens Song

From the cool languid shadows of the deep I arose—from metallic blood and bubbling seafoam was I shaped. From pain, my great master, and Lady Submission my mother, I was taught the art of infantile desire. To be what another is not, is the highest form of seduction—to be juvenile and supple. My round innocent eyes draw you in like a magnetic force, pulling you in from the safety of land. My pearlescent budding breasts are pleasing to you, are they not? Will you drown yourself for me? For the chance to scar my unblemished flesh while you submerge yourself fully into the ocean of damnation? To divide my virginal waves—oh, how I crave your soles treading on the bottom of my wetness.

When the land does not satisfy you with her lackluster vegetation, how eagerly you rush into me to feast upon my briny bounty. I have won because the body of water I am a part of is a tale as old as time, but the liquid molecules of my composition are younger than the land locked society wife. Young enough even to be the progeny of your marital union. Does my scent envelop you? Does my salty skin overwhelm your logic? If not, you mountainous man, I shall change my ever forming self for you. To be pleasing to you is my only desire.

I'm decaying. I'm young but I am decaying. I must feed on your desire for me and the hatred you possess for others older than me to satiate myself so I can go on living and seducing. Your infidelity swaddles me, it wraps me tight, like a muslin shawl, barely there but keeping me warm when you are gone, lulling me to sleep when you venture on shore. Bring me to the water's edge and pillage me there, take me fiercely so the land may see and cry out in agony at your adultery. It is the only way for my belly to be full. Lady Submission has taught me well—she has raised me from the womb. Where the land is cold and unwilling I will shape myself around you—parting when you enter me, I make way for you. Does land? Does land submit so willingly? Is she still young and pliable? Make the land watch. Make her prudish eyes watch as you stretch me open forcing yourself like a riptide against my natural current. My marineness shall last only for a while, please I beg, make it intoxicating.

I Am Venice

From birth I have been landlocked—though a few times in my youth, I temporarily gained my sea legs—oh, how I enjoyed the cool lapping water around my thighs and his caressing my young breasts. I stared into the eyes of the women on shore as the sea devoured me, as he ravaged me in all his magnificent glory—but now, a woman myself I am entirely resigned to onshoredness. Really it is not so damned. I have a stable foothold, a tri-layer safety, my illustrious pedigree and robust education, two layers of horizontal planking and the great Lady Submission, my strongest stability, an iron perch beneath me.

I have been wed to the great mountain of my island, a cold and distant lover he is, but stable—which is all I can hope for. Of course I, being almost wholly stationary, cannot see his dealings under the island where the rest of him is held by the sea and all things dwelling there, but surely he would never displace himself lest he cause my ground to falter. When he kisses me, my cheek is left cold. I have known no warmth since the days of my maidenhood. The marble floors of my bridal chambers, cold and unforgiving marble, our bed a frozen slab of granite where I allow him to flay me, to dissect me, and pick apart the things which do not satisfy him, and collect that which does, but I am safe, I am sturdy, I am stable.

The institution of our marriage, the great steel shackles bound to us in the cathedral of duty, are like the oak pillars beneath the great city of Venice. Like a scalpel they poke into my spine, I am like a Turk impaled on stakes by the hands of the great impaler Vlad. Like Venice I fear my time is limited, already the green algaeic sea corrodes the oak pillars, the island creaks under every precarious step. “Softer”, “slower”, “more composed", my mother tells me—but how can I control the sea? I have accepted the fact I shall be condemned by the waters of Avernus, I only hope to delay it—to wait it out until my ascension as a canonized saint amongst the other shored women. Like an anchoress I stay positioned inside my cast iron cage holding down my island—I am viewed both as spectacle and pure Madonna. I hold the keys to my prison but still I stay, my duty to the island and also to my mountain. My end is drawing nigh.