Cloelia

by Lilla Radics

Muffled grey seeps into my room

My mother calls, watery green eyes

That suddenly appear

Wherever I turn my sight

Peace! peace! oh, what price

Ten sons, ten daughters, a fool’s paradise.

A whisper in the night - 

For the best. Go get dressed

As I get dragged off, milk-white

Teeth, a flash, are we going west?

I don’t understand. Bodies clash - I stumble,

But my feet under me crumble

I come to, in a dull tent.

A wolf bares its bloody canines

It devours me and drags me

Into the carpet’s design

I dream, a lamb in a slaughterhouse

She flees - she falls - blood on her blouse.

The brutish days pass by better

When the other captives find me.

We devise a plan, letter by letter

By the river, under the pine tree -

When we bathe, the guards can’t possibly 

Deny us our precious modesty!

Long eyelashes fluttering like

Butterflies, pleading eyes -

The guards leave. We thieve

Our liberty back from the 

Envious waves of the river

One by one, not a forgiver.

Bodies swallowed by water -

Then spat right out. I yell,

Follow me! I hear a cowbell ring.

Angels sing? No, the rush

Of blood in my ear. A push,

And someone wails - sand under my nails.

Freedom is a boy with a wolfish temper

Changing its mind and never quite tender

So when we get found out,

When Porsena’s men corner us and

When they throw us around and shout,

It doesn’t even feel treasonous.

A gently carved statue of a girl

Maddening, brave, on the hill of Via Sacra

In marble a delicate pearl

In truth a bitter rage, a silent stage.

What I get: a sculpture of me for bravery

And a life of empty rot and slavery.