The Minotaur

Oh me! This whiteness of my skin and hair
in the sick light which seeps into my prison

This tufted tail my distal siblings mocked
before I was pulled from my mother’s pumping breast

(my mother, who loved me)

Her shrieks resound down the hollow years
since they flung me here, underground, catacombed

Month by month I felt my muscles harden
these hefty horns grew from my long skull

They fed me children, trying to cure my melancholy
the man in me could be anything: carnivore, cannibal

Yet the bull prevailed, allowed the children
to eat each other. There was one who would not

But children cannot live on straw alone
he died in my arms —-

Years it took to map the twists of this labyrinth
and now I shy from the gateway, the world of men

Their greed, frippery and lies, the endless killing
they smell worse to me than the dead children in here

The echoes warned me this assassin-prince would come
my sister leads him, trailing a glinting thread

Always something of the spider in her ‘Leave him
while you can.’ I want to say ‘He’s using you.’

But I can only bellow. They’ll hear stark rage
and never know how much I crave this fate.

Bel Wallace started writing in earnest after walking 560 miles of a pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. Her writing has been short-listed for the Bridport Poetry Prize, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in a range of journals and anthologies, most recently in Artemis and Under the Radar. She is trying to finish her first novel, but keeps getting distracted by poetry. Instagram @belwallace_writer