Niobe Aftermath by Sonya Taaffe A woman who cries turns into stone. Who never cries, dries up: sand, barren throat where rivers used to run. So many tears cried out for you, I thought dry salt would rustle in my veins, grit my eyes like a leftover dream; fragile remembrance of something before crying. Who dissolved, seeped to stone? Your tears never ate you away, corrosive, caustic, never melted you to some new and alien shape, rock wind-sculpted in the desert drought. I cry: I am not stone. Nor acid; and neither one of us, from ever looking back, a pillar of salt. Sonya Taaffe has a confirmed addiction to folklore, mythology, and dead languages. A respectable amount of her work has recently been collected in Singing Innocence and Experience and Postcards from the Province of Hyphens (Prime Books). She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Classics at Yale University and has trouble talking about herself in the third person. Image © Emily Tolson Emily Tolson has had illustrations published in Strange Horizons and The Mythic Circle, and has forthcoming illustrations in the next edition of Tales From the Transdimensional Horror Express. She is currently completing her MA in Fine Arts at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, specialising in pin-hole photography, fairy tale illustration and fantasy. The image on this page was inspired by the stories surrounding 'Pope Joan I', the mythical female pope of the mediaeval church. back to fiction archives