by Alicia Maria Susanna Fox
originally published in Xenozine
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I want him shot down in the street in broad daylight,
I want his guts in the gutter.
I want him stripped naked and in shock from the unexpected
violence of it all. I want him whipped; I want the bright blood on that
sweet, warm, sun-gilt skin. I want him sweating in disoriented fever on
the floor three impossible meters from the phone that would bring help.
I want him out of his mind with delirium, and suffering impossible nightmares
from which no-one can save him. I want him dying in agony and alone with
his friends searching fruitlessly just next door.
I want his pain.
I don't want him dead; that would be counterproductive.
I just want him dying.
And I want him dying of plague and of shooting, and of
mauling and of beating, of weather and of torture and of rape, and his
friend howling in anguish beside him. It is nothing new, what I want from
him. I am hungry for his hurting, I desire his desolation, I thirst for
his torment, I am satisfied in his injury and soothed in his blood, and
the Earth will be fruitful again.
It was the same in the days of Gilgamesh and Enkidu,
and they too paid the price of being loved by me. I am Ishtar the Great,
the Mother of Nations, and my desire is the same as my desire from of old,
when I took the wren and the war-horse and the lion as my lovers. You worship
me when you make love to my lover in this way, whether you realize it or
not. It is my voice that speaks through you. It is my will that you express.
I am Ishtar the Great, the Mother of Nations, and all things are through
my will and by my will.
Why else do you think that women
have been doing this for centuries?