Again, this is just a draft. I might go back and revise it sometime soon.

Atlas
"A Jewish settler resists Israeli police enforcing a Supreme Court order to evacuate and demolish nine homes in an outpost of the Amona settlement, West Bank, on February 1." - caption underneath Oded Bality's photograph from the Associated Press, Inc., which won First Prize: People in the News Singles, World Press Photo 07
Like so many others of its kind,
the myth had forgotten its origins.
After all, they allowed the giant
to get away with it because
he would look good in marble.
Women were too soft, too malleable -
stone was not their element
and art was not created out of water.
Women were all liquid, of the sea:
we were not meant to stop the tides
with our arms and legs. Anchorless,
we were told to move across words,
worlds. Escape was our gift, the concept
of slippage, of movement. Our eyes reflected
the moon, the sliver of light underneath curtains
tracing cracks across floors, doors.
Everyone thought of our body in curves,
the folds of cloth falling like dream-wings
allowing a moment of flight. Forgetful,
these bards and ballads: we keep to house
and hearth, do we not? We till earth, bear
children that bound us to this soil, who carry
our names like keys strung around their necks.
We chain ourselves to husbands, men, boys.
We are prepared for heartbreak.
It is here, at the end of all things
that we must remember: we carry
the weight of the world on our shoulders,
not Atlas, not the stories of men.
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