Thanks to Echo Lieb for their poem “Galatea Meets the Golem,” titled for a statue from Greek mythology!
Galatea Meets the Golem
I am unyielding marble to all your soft clay
yet you were built to endure and I
to mold to the ways of flesh.
You, defender, more stolid than sightly,
sculpted for a task, not a title.
Did that end your life, or did it save you from mine?
If language had birthed me instead of lust
would our fates be matched?
If “truth” was my very being
I fear I would have rampaged sooner,
let my gifted life force lead me further,
left far more damage in the wake of my awakening.
My husband would have fewer qualms at remolding my truth with death.
Editor’s Note: In Greek mythology, Galatea is a statue brought to life who becomes the wife of her sculptor, Pygmalion. She addresses a golem, a clay figure from Jewish folklore that lives by the Hebrew word for “truth” and dies when a letter is erased to make “dead.”
Echo Lieb (he/they) is a new writer of poetry and fiction. Between spending hours outside staring at trees and inside staring at books, they manage to make time to write about where humans and myths meet.