That night, looking at the moonlight reflecting off the cold marble floor of our bedroom, I made my decision. I was no longer a block of stone to be admired and controlled.
Before I had lungs to breathe, I had the shape he gave me. He called it perfection. He told me that my cold, white marble hips were the standard by which all living women should be judged. He had prayed to the gods for a wife who would never talk back, never age, and never turn her eyes away from him. Galatea - Madeline Miller.epub
He froze. The hammer in his hand—the same hammer he used to chip away at new blocks of stone in his studio—dropped to the floor with a loud, heavy thud. He looked at me with genuine terror in his eyes. He loved the goddess-given flesh, but he was absolutely terrified of the mind that lived inside it. "What did you say?" he hissed. That night, looking at the moonlight reflecting off
The shift happened when my daughter, Paphos, was born. As I held her tiny, warm body against my chest, I looked at her soft skin. I realized that he would try to carve her, too. Not with a iron chisel, but with his voice, his rules, and his suffocating expectations. He would want her to be a silent statue, just like he wanted me to be. He called it perfection
Stone does not change. Stone stays where you put it. Living things grow. Living things think. Living things want.