Men were always cruel to me.
Murdering my vanity,
washing it away with their kins blood.
High men sent me down,
sent me into a wet, dark, world.
Sinners scales cascading down my neck,
A rash of blue, gray, and green.


Cursed man from whom I sprung,
I bear no apology for your stained image.
My sharp, angular bones sliced her silken skin.
My mouth, with devil-filed teeth, devoured her.
Piece by piece.
Until I was your portrait.

*****

After you cast me out from your mind
I lived alone.
With myself, and myself,
This nameless monster, myself
Self loathing in cracked crying mirrors.


Until, an answer to a piteous prayer,
I mothered an offspring.
Equally as horrendous as I,
If not more so.
He wailed to me, and
While drowning my grudges.
I loved him.


I said to that child:
“My poor disfigured babe,
What life have I dragged you to?
Bred from sin herself!
I may not renounce you, and, selfishly,
I have no wish to.”
I raised the devil’s son in my water-logged den.

*****

Generations of mortals passed above us.
The ones who outcasted Cain and I,
Long ago gone.
But, my resentment grew with each age,
So did my son’s.


So when that forsaken mead-hall, Heorot,
Was built by the Danes.
I snarled viciously, rippling my waters.
Who were they to gloat free lives!
While we were cursed to these unholy depths!


My babe watched as they vexed me
And in his mind he planned.

He attacked that meeting place,
slaughtering the people I envied.
He came home with such pride,
grotesque mouth dripping men’s blood.
I clapped my webbed hands.

“My son, you have honored me,
Done what I cannot,”

I praised him and he accepted it greedily.

My dear damned boy continued raiding by night and bringing to me the men.

**********

“Mother! Mother!”
My son dragged himself over the thresh
And I bolted to him,
Held his head to my breast.
Eyed the fatal injury.

“The Geat mother! He attacked me. I am hurt!”
He bayed.
His calf eyes bore panic.
The gaping wound of an arm
Left trails of blood on my scaled legs.


Grendel’s eyes remained wide.
I lamented heavily
Praying my voice to collapse the blood soaked hall.


I stopped suddenly, anger curling my lips.
I hissed to the water:
“Who am I praying to? God? Ha! That wretched one
Who damned me. Who gave me a child just to kill him!
And I’m the monster?”


There my decision was made, fate sewn.
I put my child to bed.
I cooed:

“I will avenge you Grendel. Show them what it is,
to lose their love,”

**********


I set off to that land,
Where they feared my son and I.
I found Heorot in it’s unfortunate glory.
Standing slightly shambled,
I smelled the blood of drunken men.



I stalked forward in the morning dark,
Into the hall. But one pounced!
A spear trying for my thigh.
I shrieked in surprised, awakening more.
They attacked without thought, I grabbed a man.
A sleeping man.
And fled,
Back to the depths of my prison.


I dismembered the corpse on my way.
Like picking, and scattering marigolds,
I left a glowing trail.
Back into the water I plunged.
A plume of red backing me.
A royal cape of richness.


I laid the remaining pieces of man beside my son.
A trophy to pay for his arm.


Than, as all mothers, I wept.
I wept until the world around was more tear than water.
I wept until I no longer felt the jolting of my shoulders.

I wept until he was near.
That God-fearing Geat who brutishly murdered my babe.
He was near.


I launched myself from the mourning position.
With an outstretched hand I caught him.
The maggot wormed about in my grasp
My followers nipped at his armor.


In my home he struck me.
His blade came down,
Ready to tear my glittering flesh.
But it did not. It bit but did not cut.
The hero’s sword granted me mercy.

The foolish soldier, arrogant in nature,
Flung his weapon to the sand.


I fought him as he wished.
Hand to hand.
But I am foolish myself and pulled a blade.
Surely if God had spared me
This was to be the outcome.
I plunged my knife down.
The blade turned.
This was not fate.


This warrior was on his feet.
The glint in his eyes murderous.
I turned to protect Grendel’s body.
His precious physical form.
Then that Geat, Beowulf, struck me down.
The sword my own.


I toppled forward into nothing.
Felt my eyes roll
Heard the seething whisper among hell-fire:
“Welcome, Coventina,”
It swallowed me heatedly.
Whole.