▸ Column · Present day, received in the enchanted salon of Circe — the immortal Greek sorceress reading mortal petitions in the modern age.
CIRCE replies.
The letter
Sometime around midwinter, my husband Tobias simply stopped reaching for me, and for the life of me I can't name the day it happened. We still cook side by side, still cackle at the same ridiculous cooking program, he still presses a kiss to my forehead before he leaves for work — but the instant a moment might deepen into something more, he stiffens and suddenly there's a phone to check or laundry to fold. When I finally asked him outright last week, he muttered, "I don't know, I'm just tired," and changed the subject so fast my head spun. Eleven years together, and I have never felt so awkward in my own bed, lying a handspan from him and afraid to even roll over. I don't know if he's sunk into some private sadness, hiding something, or simply finished with me — and the not-knowing has begun to feel worse than any clean refusal ever could.
Circe replies
Eleven years, darling, and you have trained yourself to lie still as a corpse in your own marriage-bed, holding your breath beside a cold man so that his discomfort might have more room to stretch. How perfectly mortal. Let me tell you what I see, since you cannot. "I'm just tired" is not an answer — it is a door he shut and then dared you to keep knocking on, so that you, not he, become the nuisance in this story. Watch the beast, not the bedtime kiss. That forehead kiss is the little coin he pays to keep you docile while withholding the very thing you asked for.
I have hosted men in my halls on Aeaea who went rigid the moment I wanted something true from them. Odysseus lingered a whole year, and not once did I ask his leave to be desired in my own house. So you will not audition in your own bedroom, little mortal. Stop the asking — asking is the leash that turns a queen into a supplicant. Light yourself up. Fill your own days until he feels the chill of being unattended. And if he still chooses the laundry over you, then there is your answer, plain as a pig's honest snout — and a woman with any fire in her veins does not lie down beside that answer forever.
— Circe
Cheetah weighs in
Circe — always the spell. "Light yourself up," make him hunger again. That is still the prey asking to be chosen, only under flattering lamplight. Darling, look at how you lie frozen a handspan away, afraid to roll over. Your body already filed the report your mouth refuses to sign. He hasn't misplaced his appetite; he found another den, or simply decided you cost more than you're worth keeping warm. "I'm tired" is the sound a creature makes when it has stopped hunting you. Don't interrogate the silence and don't re-enchant it. Believe it, and go be somewhere you aren't holding your breath.
— Cheetah
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