Later she walks alone down to the sea, immerses as she does every night, to cool and wash off the sweat and smell and all of her existence. She holds her breath, sinks below the surface, holds her arms around her breasts as if she were holding Asteropeia, slow fall into darkness, lost and without sound.

More and more difficult each night to surface, to leave water and walk up the hill to her home, round mud hovel not much larger than her cauldron. She pushes in between Jason and her sons, smells their filth, dense hot cloud as stifling as the room of fire and vapor, scent of rock and feel of Jason turning to stone, skin become dust and flesh hardening beneath, returning to the first form of earth god, ledge and weight compacting layer upon layer until his footsteps will sink.

She lies on her side, turned away from Jason, and wraps an arm around her sons. Thin, unlike children, smelling like goats, smelling of shit caked on their hands and feet and knees, flinching in their sleep and grabbing at shapes in the air. When they wake, they will talk without pause, questions and telling her everything about nothing. She doesn’t know if this is their age or because they have only a few waking moments together. Medea has never spent a full day with her children. She doesn’t know what they should be or who she should be. All she can do is put her arm around them, breathe in their acrid scent, and sleep.

2

2

Old ram, brains gone and replaced by bone, huge shelf of a head above dark senseless eyes, caverns of time and silence and no recognition. Refusing to be pulled in any direction, crabbing sideways then butting hard against a leg. Dark white in the moon, full curl of horns rough and patterned, unfelt scars and forgotten battle.

Medea and Asteropeia and one of her sisters all struggling in the yard, trying to reach the door. Bleating of sheep and goats from within, roar and heat of fire, smell of meat and blood boiling, and the ram somehow knows. Black mouth biting, then lowering his head again, hooves opening furrows in the hard ground.

Three ropes around him now: around his horns, cinched high around a front leg, and catching a hind hoof. They pull him backward, hind leg first, make him hop. Medea without mercy, feeling nothing, yanking her way back into the room. This ram could be Pelias and she would pull the same.

Every sheep and goat inside smelling the old ram, bleating and pushing away from him into corners, knocking over piles of wood, legs caught and tumbling, chaos. At the threshold, he butts hard enough to raise dust from the wall. Leaping now and falling hard as his legs are pulled out, scrabbling up, hooves against stone, head and neck bucking at the air. A form of king, unable to believe, dominion absolute.