Yesteryear Fiction

The Tenth Muse’s Fire
By Jennifer A. Hudson


When I was young and fanciful, I’d daydream of mists that hovered among weeping willows, hear whispers carried in the sea’s foamy curls, feel feathery fronds of words delivered by an eagle’s white-tipped wings. But when I’d heard my lyre quiver while Erato plucked her strings, I wailed fiercely and ran to the unseen pool guarded by Mnemosyne. I drank from the hot spring, felt its fire ripple new knowledge through my being while it cremated my original consciousness whose burning embers I began to wave like a semaphore in the dark expanse surrounding me. Mnemosyne leaned in, her warm whisper tickling my ear: “By your passion you have anointed yourself Tenth Muse. Go spread your fire.” So I took cinders, rubbed them between my fingers and traced my angry words on a sheet of papyrus, knowing that I would rise with ash as my emblem and fury as my domain as I turned Erato mad, executing her sentence.


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Writer. Poet. Essayist. Madwoman.