Lesbian Love Story by Amelia Possanza

Author:Amelia Possanza
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781646221066
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2023-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

Now the goddess is asking for more. If S. truly wants to be remembered, to escape the destruction of the years to come, of flood and fire, the forgetfulness of scholars, words will not be enough. She must act.

She has seen the man in town, pointed out not with a celestial finger but with a warmth in her heart that could easily be confused with love or, at the very least, desire. The ferryman Phaon. She has seen the way women flirt with him. To make a public declaration would only make her look foolish, as foolish as she had been in her youth at Anactoria’s wedding. She is old enough now to be his mother, grandmother, even.

Aphrodite came to her in a dream. To be remembered, she said without a word, S. must show her love for Phaon, show that she is willing to risk it all for him, even if he does not feel the same in return. She wakes with a start, heat pricking her skin even before the sun has risen over Mytilene. “I know not what to do,” she whispers, “I have two minds.”

She senses a trick. Aphrodite already rewarded the man with youth and beauty for his kindness in ferrying her, a stranger, divinity buried under the guise of an old woman, across a strait. S. wonders if Aphrodite intends to give him the poetess of desire as another of his rewards.

There was a desperation in the goddess’s request, as if she had begun to realize that power is not forever, not even the power of an immortal. More men will come, and they will bring more gods. Aphrodite alone cannot make the world remember S.

In the blaze of the day, S. makes a plan. She will leave her island again, this time never to return. Cleis is old enough to no longer need a mother, and Cercylas grew bored of her long ago. She will sail to the high cliffs of Lefkada. There, she will stage her own death, a jump, a swan song, her dress snagged against the rocks, fluttering in the wind, no body left to fill it. Aphrodite and Phaon and the generations still to come will get their myth and, in exchange, she will get to live out the rest of her days undisturbed. Perhaps she will bring the girl, the one without shyness, and together they will live on lonely mountain peaks.

Death is an evil: the gods have so decided, otherwise they would die.

But S. is determined to be ruled by a different fate.

I shall love.

Into desire I shall come.

Sweet-speaking desire

streams over your lovely face,

and I will lay down my limbs

on a soft cushion.

I say someone in the future

will remember us.

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