A Reprise

She had entered the holy temple. It was cool and dripping with the smell of incense, like the cave she loved. She felt Sam standing next to her in a tailored brown suit with a matching vest, which she had never seen him wear, and so dressed he looked much younger than she was accustomed to. The fragrance of his mother and sisters stuck in her throat like taffy. They were wearing separate, loud colognes that blurred momentarily in the narthex, making Lilith long for the scents of sweat and salt water, unpretentious and undemanding. Her breath trembled to come out of her, but she forced it back in like a fisherman plunging struggling fish into a bucket. Mr. Zimmerman’s meaty, hairy arms flashed before her eyes. Emmaline was wearing a delicate pink dress that attacked Lilith’s yellow linen like a bloodthirsty dragon, reducing it to tattered shreds around her scuffed ankle boots. Lilith’s head felt as stiff as a basket from the spray she had used to tame her hair. Emmaline’s hair was s...

And I read back over them and think about them, over and over, to understand better. The Siren is autobiographical for me in so many ways. It's about being different from everyone else, really different, so different it's like I'm a different species, like Lilith is. And it has a special significance for me in the way it began. I will never forget the night I first started this story. It was the beginning of realizing who I am. No one asked me to join a conformist Bible group, but I did. I was lonely. I wanted to meet other people like me. I thought since I was technically a Christian, there would be common ground there. However people were put off by me. I couldn't help but notice. I panicked when I saw it, and how it stung, but I persevered and kept going every week hoping sooner or later they would accept me as I was. So I went against the grain a little more and revealed more about myself, and told some of them about this novel I had written and submitted to a ...

Lilith stumbled back from the rocks and waded back to shore. As she looked back, she saw the white of Amalthea's garments and the tawny bronze hair waving in the wind like fearsome flags. She was suddenly constricted with fear for Jim, realized she should not have left him alone with Amalthea. But it was too late to return. She knew it in Amalthea's sudden keening cry. She saw her slender form collapse upon the jagged rocks as her melodious voice lifted in terrifying song. The sky melted suddenly into pools of ink, and the wind was blunt and cold across her wet clothes. Lilith turned and ran back to the house. The kitchen door slammed behind her as her eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness. "Lorena? Is anyone home?" She tracked sand across the clean linoleum. Her clothes dripped as she wandered from room to room, shaking with grief and sudden fear. She felt horrifyingly alone. "Mother? Mother.?" She opened the door to her parents' bedroom, a san...

Wallace Stevens She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. No more was she. The song and water were not medleyed sound Even if what she sang was what she heard, Since what she sang was uttered word by word. It may be that in all her phrases stirred The grinding water and the gasping wind; But it was she and not the sea we heard. For she was the maker of the song she sang. The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea Was merely a place by which she walked to sing. Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew It was the spirit that we sought and knew That we should ask this often as she sang. If it was only the dark voice of the sea That rose, or even colored by many waves; If it was only the outer voice of sky An...