They come to me for a summer, saying, oh Sappho, teach me song and poetry and all things lovely which trickle like honey off the tongue.
Here, in fields a-hum with bees and studded with clover, away from the eyes of men, they sit in circles and learn meter and cadence and turn of phrase.
I learn of all the things I cannot have.
Fevered flushes on milky cheeks, peach-down on arms and sunburnt legs sprawled in the grass, freckles scattered across shoulders, white scars on sun-browned skin, thin baby hairs at the napes of necks, translucent crescent moons of fingernails, rosy fingers plucking lyre strings, mouths stained red with the juice of strawberries, pudge of soft fat around the stomach, sweet smell of powder mixed with sweat in the sun, the suggestion of firm roundness beneath the folds of a peplos.
Violets laid in their laps which their fingers weave into crowns as they recite.
Skirts laden with apples and pomegranates, lifted above thin knobby ankles, bare feet in their dusting of earth, white and brown arms reaching in high arcs above their heads to snatch their prizes from the branches.
They are nymphê, teetering between girl and woman, between daughter and wife. When they leave they will be ready for marriage. But not yet.
For a season, they belong not to their fathers or their husbands, but with me. For a moment, they are mine.
There is no time in their lives when they belong to themselves.
Callisto loved a woman once. It was her goddess, Artemis, whose fleet footsteps she followed after, racing through the woods and over the hills in their pack of virgin girls. Deershooter huntresses, bare-footed, wild-hearted, running feral and free as long as the sun hung in the sky. At night she dreamed of her goddess’s white arms encircling her in their embrace. But her fresh face caught the eye of Zeus, who took her in the guise of her beloved, while she laughed with the joy of a love thought hopeless, finally requited.
When dawn’s pale light rose on her lying flush and bare in the grass, the one she loved most turned away from her. No longer virgin, Artemis accused her. No longer maiden. No longer mine.
Cruel goddess, hard as silver, cold as moonlight. As changing in your affections as the phases of the moon in the dark sky.
All maidens follow your example. They swear to me they are mine. In the night they come to me and we hold one another in soft arms, and they claim they are my maiden of the moon. But in the harsh light of day where they may be seen by prying eyes, they grow distant, and in a season they are a blushing bride, thanking me for all I have done for them, pressing my hand in theirs and letting it slip away.
I sing their wedding songs. I praise their good fortune in receiving Aphrodite’s blessing–I who have begged for it in tears each night and woken to an empty place beside me–and pretend that I shed tears of joy.
I play their Callisto, fool for believing in their words of loyalty, for worshiping at their feet.
I believe the next will be the one who does not leave me.
Bitter-sweet Eirana,
Fickle Atthis,
Anactoria who swore she did not want to go, that it broke her to part, who has not sent one word for me.
I am sick to death of the sound of goodbyes.
The deep tone of the barbitos’s strings strikes resonant with my heart. They say it suits me more than the light-hearted lyre, that I have always been best at tragedies, and I can only laugh.
So often have we laughed together at the expense of the male sex. I say men are tyrannical, oafish, rough. True, they agree. True, so true dear Sapph, true my love, all too true. Then why leave? Why go to them on your wedding day, giddy, crowned in flowers, draped in saffron and veiled in joy? Have you loved me so little that you cannot even feign regret? Why does the coldest treachery always come from the sun that once filled my life with the warmest of light? Why is it always the hand which I held most dear and beloved in all the world, which always wields and twists the knife? Dear Gods, why shape me from the clay and set desire in my heart for all the things I cannot grasp?
I have grown tired of being the plaything of cruel girls and crueler gods.
I have swallowed an obol to pay the ferryman; I long to see him. I have fastened anklets of stones around my feet. The rope chafes my skin, but I do not feel the burn. The salt in the air, the cries of the gulls, the crash of the waves against the cliffs greet me home.
Say farewell to your dear Callisto. May the waters of the Lethe work quick. When their brackish taste bathes my tongue and stings my throat, may all my memories be erased like our footsteps in the sand by ocean waves, where we once walked side by side. May I forget every soul I ever loved, who left me to drown alone.