I never dreamed to wear the myrtle crown. 

She did, and ran circles under the storm clouds. Smite me, 

she sang, while I helped Mother weave. 

We were making the siege of Thebes. 

It looked pretty in thread, gold and red. 

Antigone’s was a paler fire,

by sovereign will and her heart of flint.

It didn’t warm so much as blaze, 

and when she put it out, there was nothing left to shock us. 

We’d lost our innocence, such as it was,

and the right to walk dry-faced in the city.

---

I talk as if the rest of us still lived,

and I were worthy of their company. Antigone

would smite me from the heroes’ fields

and laugh that I left hardly a char spot.

Cowards have no substance.

---

At times I envy her pretty death,

and the temper that they say still keeps her warm

I hate, for goading the best of us 

to honor a brother, break the family,

and leave me sorry to survive them.

But under warm winds, I hear the bleating sheep, 

and imagine us together on the hills,

when Father stretched his hand over the city

and grasped it in his fist, like grapes to pick;

when death seemed like a gem in all the stories,

negligible in our high, stone halls—

I think she knew that we were the invaders,

that death for king and country weren’t amends,

that hanging in the hopes of paradise

might wring some tears and force the gods’ concession,

to smite her not, but let her into Elysium.

The wedding veil was genius. Even I’m amazed

it held as hanging rope, and death shroud,

the pearls that I had sewn to it so bright.

---

Tapestries fade and tombs moss over. 

I’m scared to die, in sleep or fight, and pray

for but a drop of daring. She laughs, 

or so I hear her in the crack of lightning

over trembling trees. Rain for me today,

or ridicule. Don’t burn blue and cloudless

while I lay milk and myrtle on your stones

and die of loneliness.