Elektra

by Jennifer Saint

He is angry because it is in his bones to be angry.

But this man, the king of all the Greeks, he has been angry since long before the war even began. I see the rage simmering in his younger face; I see him slighted in a great hall of men all clamoring for the same prize.

The whispers of his rage hiss and tumble in my ears.

And, in between the pulses of rage, the red raw edge of it, there is panic.

I thought that grief would be like a sea of suffering within me, that it would rack me with its storms and endlessly replenish my tears, but instead it lodges like a heavy stone in my throat.