Hypnerotomachia Polia

Inspired by Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

A reader suggested to me that this could be interpreted as a story of sexual violence. I don’t contest the validity of this interpretation, though I intended a reading that more specifically underscores the relationship between body horror, childbirth, and pursuit. I’m putting this under a “read more” to alert any readers that might prefer to avoid any themes referenced in this paragraph.

Outrunning him in his own dream is not possible. Polia claws at her face; his fingers catch on the delicate chain around her throat. Yellow diamond necklace, rose-shaped clasp at the nape. His touch is nothing but suffering but suffer it, she does.

Outrunning him in his own dream is not possible. Poliphilus maintain a server in which he photoshops her face onto pornography. He shares the address with his childhood friends. At the bus stop, moonrise brushing against her shoulders, the gentlest of them reaches back in line to circle her wrist with his calloused hand, by way of warning. “Forgive him,” he mutters, implausibly. “It is a gesture of love.”

Outrunning him in his own dream is not possible. She wakes up, supine, in a pool of something that could be her blood. Rising groggily to rest on her elbows, she looks around. The grass around her is knee-height, frayed, and yellow. The singed air is as warm as an embrace. Her mind is a bayonet.

She rubs her forehead; her hand comes back carrying the touch of reddish pearl, a trace of lily-of-the-valley. Passion, its vapidity. The dream has plush, royal blue, chevron-patterned walls. It has grass-green doors with ornate hinges and knockers. Spa music plays. She walks underneath a stone arch. Water flows underneath the flagstones, unseen. On the tapestries, a scene in gold thread, of a kneeling figure in a lace veil. Every exit in the dream is guarded by a fanged and feathered beast. They open their garnet-red beaks, revealing rows of tiny teeth. “Sorry,” they say, in her mother’s voice.

Outrunning him in his own dream is not possible. She browses women’s forums. She clicks through the photos of labor. Feet in stirrups, the toenails painted in a stylish shade. The masked doctor. The baby, that candied fruit of the Earth, puckered, bleary-eyed. In one tiled corner, hands braided over his chest, the father.

Outrunning him in his own dream is not possible. She is racing up the steps of a spiral-shaped tower, barefoot. A woman appears at the next turn of the circle; she grabs Polia by the neck—the pincer of her hand like a diamond choker—and pushes her back down. She lands, in parts, in the half-circle of Poliphilus’ arms. He whispers something to her about roses and fountains, about fawns and ramparts, about eternity.

Outrunning him in his own dream is not possible. The smell of his breath is like mold on her mind. Princess Io in the gilded frame, stubby white horns underneath her black hair, tracing the perimeter of the pasture. Polia follows the path of her footsteps through the wet, trodden grass. She turns, blinking against the setting sun, to recede through a gate inside herself. She waits for him to wake up.