#technically this was a class assignment for a POV poem that I forgot to put in first person oops

[cindysnuts]

The Minotaur

The Bull of Minos:

an unloved creature, his sole purpose was to exist as a blight.

Assigned the label of monster at birth,

he was thrown away into a cursed labyrinth

which would serve as his only home

and as his tomb.

Half bull and half man, he inherited the opportunity to be neither.

Being fundamentally misunderstood by his caretakers,

he was mandated to go against both of his natures

and feed only on his fellow men,

something neither a man nor a bull would ever do

unless he was forced to.

But it is what a monster would eat. And so it is what he was fed.

For the crime of daring to exist outside the binary delineating man from all else,

his life was spent in a prison designed to torture the mind,

becoming the fiend the oracles thought him to be,

and he was slaughtered.

His killer was immortalized as a hero

and secured a throne as reward

for ridding the world of such a deplorable beast.

He was given no eulogy.

Asterius was his name, meaning “Star.”

Perhaps it is a bit ironic, considering he spent his one and only life on this earth

locked underground

far away from the beauty of his namesake.

He was never able to live as himself,

never able to use his true name.

Who could he have been, if not so despised?

What could he have done?

Whom could he have loved?

Would he really have been a monster?

Is he the Mythological Minotaur?

Is he the Bull of Minos?

Or is he Asterius, the Star?

It is too late to change his fate,

but perhaps it is not too late

to change ours.