Finding Theseus
The thread that runs through expectation fools you. It causes you to stare at statues with marble flourishes, and pine that they come alive. It suggests, as only a loose, red thread can, that you are the mythic Ariadne searching for her Theseus—in a café, on a train, by the whisper of a holy well. You do not find him in any of these places. He remains faceless, even in dreams, without warmth or scent, a disembodied longing. And this, this now, is stasis. This feeling of turning round and round, facing in the cardinal directions, emptiness. Glorious failure, you think as you rebelliously set off, like a lady traveler with stones in her pocket, a parasol for shade.
The journey is far, over heavy hills. Beyond that: cliffs and Herculean sea, the stinging wind calling out infatuation. You keep going. The thread becomes taut, as if another holds its end. Some say Ariadne found Theseus by feminine wiles, seduction unspooled through the original, illogical maze, love’s beautiful death transcribed for centuries. A woman’s heart is like the tide, retreating only to return with greater offerings. It is perversely ruled by generosity. You pick a flower for your hair. A peony, pink and shuddering, so he will know you, or think he does.
This is a floodplain, a water meadow. It is a little desolate place where you sink and sink and tell yourself it is good to feel so grateful, good to see the brittle, crackling stars shining light years away. This is where you drown.
All myths are lies. All myths twist what happened into impertinent sacrifices, by which we gauge our darkest selves and go on deceiving. Take this thread as far as it will go and then come back to me, she told Theseus, and you wonder now if he ever let go, sword in one hand, thread in the other, if through the tumult he held on, held on to you. Somewhere there is a fossil of the Minotaur’s smile.
Forget betrayal. Forget that he said he had no joy for you. Forget that he foolishly raised the black sails instead of the white ones. Forget that you lay on the beach waiting for the waves to take you. Forget that you never stopped searching. Forget the clew of pain. Forget that he said he loved you.
Arrow stuck in heart, voodoo-like, lace—this is a Valentine written in blood. Your friends as Greek chorus tell you to be specific, yet you pivot between ideals, wanting now a man whose laugh is like a gust of surprise that makes you laugh also, now someone whose eyes are the color of water in a silver chalice. He should appreciate a woman whose fists are perennially clenched, her trust unraveled, who is foolish as a daffodil in her rising skirt, rooted legs. He should know about magical regrets, and how what breaks you ensures your survival.
Like a mail-order bride you trot along expectantly and the path narrows, just a ruff of weeds, a buzz. This will be different, you decide, no doppelgänger hookup, by which your body is made palm sized and myriad eyes of strangers assess you, and no one speaks but in the language of slaughtered animals. Yes, your calm, bearded groom waits for you in his tiny house, silhouetted by thin curtains. He is wearing a deerstalker hat but he is not a deerstalker. He is kind. He will show you how to waltz, and he will recite the dead poets, and together you will climb into his loft, to witness the end of the world when all the birds fly away. He will be broken though. You won’t find out about this until later.
The moon’s aperture is ever widening, ever waning. Behind the clouds it is a milky brass. You gaze as if into a mirror, knowing that you are no one here, and that the blue dot where your anxieties flare is just a speck of time and place bearing witness. You follow an elusive white moth as it flutters into a wood, you hear his voice in the owl’s hoot, you feel the press of his hips in the way the branches rub against you, leaving a dark kiss of sweet rustling leaves. You forgive what you cannot forgive and the way opens, feels clearer.
You tell yourself that a lady in a torn, muddy dress has something to offer the nobler world. You tell yourself that babies in bathwater, mania in all its forms, helpful greedy female ancestors, and restless Minotaurs are all welcome in your heart, all crucial for some forensic understanding. But this field, this field is endless, long and wide. This night, grotesque when it begins to hail crystals of grief, what was un-given, cold and sharp. Hurrying on, you stub your toe, almost twist your ankle. Cracked inside, womanhood leaking out, the change the change that damns you, turns you into a crone. You are moodily swearing in French: merde, merde, when a stranger with sad grey eyes appears beside you with a torch.
He says hello. And because he is wearing a sodden, deerstalker hat, which makes him seem pathetic, because you have blisters and every part of you aches, because he is tipping toward you in a spectral way, the common field morphing into a volcano, the two of you like wistful tourists peering down and in, down and in, because the world carries its injustices, its molten vanities. Because there is no use for hesitation anymore—you thread your arm through his. It seems a good strategy, considering you’re both lost.