held too close
galatea speaks
porcelain shatters when it gets too warm and i can't help but locate myself in the pieces.
rigor has always seemed more comfortable than embracing warmth.
isn't that strange how something so delicate, so diaphanous
isn't destroyed by force alone but by the tenderness it cannot hold?
fragility doesn't know what to do with warmth it isn't built for closeness
and suddenly what once gleamed flawless becomes a ruin of fragments.
maybe that's the cruelest part about being fragile. you don't only break when the world is unkind
you also break when it tries to love you. when the hands that reach for you
mean well, but their touch lingers too close too long too warm, until the edges begin to soften.
until you can no longer pretend you were ever whole.
all i know is that warmth terrifies me. not because i don't long for it
i do, desperately. but because i don't know how to survive it.
because i don't know if i'm built to hold it without falling apart.
but maybe that's what fragility truly means: wanting so much to be held
knowing you might not last in someone else's hands.
because to be held, to be cared for, to be chosen feels like a fire i was never supposed to endure.
Who’s Who:
This poem’s speaker is Galatea, from Greek mythology. If you’re familiar with my previous series on Greek myth retellings, Turning & Turning, you will recognize her name from the poem I wrote called “the perfect woman”.
In myth, Pygmalion was a renowned sculptor who was also known for his hatred of women. He famously despised every ‘type’ of owman that he encountered: virginal maidens, prostitutes, married women, mothers, priestesses, widows, old women…None fit his impossible standards. So he took to marble, and after many attempts, finally constructed his ideal woman out of the stone. He fell in love with this creation, and prayed desperately to Aphrodite to make her a real woman so he could love her.
She (for some reason, I don’t like this characterization of aphrodite but oh well) listened and felt pity for Pygmalion, so she breathed life into the statute and made her a real woman. Pygmalion named her Galatea, and to this day, she remains a symbol for impossible beauty standards of women.
Pygmalion has also shifted into an ancient “incel” type of guy. You could 100% have found him complaining about women on Reddit at all hours of the day. (In fact, the recent Reddit story read on Smosh about the guy who hates vaginas reminds me of him so much. Link to watch/listen here, story starts around the 52 minute mark.)
Thanks for reading <3