for you i’d burn the length and breadth of sky

Inside the labyrinth walls
There lies a tiny child who sleeps alone
And as the daylight falls
The wind becomes so wild across the stone

For I have made her prison be
Her every step away from me
And this child I would destroy
If you tried to set her free

– “My Medea” by Vienna Teng

At a recent visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, I saw a sculpture which attracted my interest.

The sculptor captured the naked, unyielding resolve in her expression. Her face is twisted so as to reveal a trace of bitterness, her body tense, hand clenched around her dagger.

But why is she holding the knife? Perhaps what she is about to do goes beyond a mere suicide. She is not merely looking inward as to her determination and intent. She is also surveying with her mind’s eye the landscape of what she is about to do. Something she is going to carry out with that knife of hers. Something she has laid on herself to do.

What is it you see?

Without us knowing who she is, the sculptor tells us: this is a woman who is going to do something terrible. She has lost something very dear to her, and in recompense, she is going to take fate in her own hands and make it so that the person who has wronged her is going to suffer more than she has.

So come to me my love
I’ll tap into your strength and drain it dry
Can never have enough
For you I’d burn the length and breadth of sky

For it’s my thoughts that bind me here
It’s this love that I most fear
And this child I would destroy
For I hold her pain most dear

There is madness there. A madness that would overturn the worlds of others, carving a swatch of destruction even as she herself is destroyed.

A madness she would allow. There is no turning away from this point forward, for her.

 

Picture not by me

No haven for this heart
No shelter for this child in mazes lost
Heaven keep us apart
A curse for every mile of ocean crossed

For I must die for what I’ve done
A twist of fate, a desert sun
For I see what I destroy
Sweet reflection knife into me
For I see what I destroy
I can see what I’ve begun.

Perhaps the child you sing of is not merely that which you have given birth to, but that which is in you, and that which is lost. That which you would destroy, and for which you must die, is not merely something you have begotten, but something inside you.

Maybe the child you sing of is also you yourself.

But why would you erase that part of you? Lock away something permanently so that you may never come back to it?

And why would you take that future away from her?

Who are you?

Medea, tell me: what is it that you saw?