Poison Cup

in

By C.M. Green

‘Gertrude, do not drink.’

He says it and I am tired. I am tired of death following me, so I wonder if it’s time for me to follow death. When he asked me to marry him, he held roses in one hand and a knife in the other. To cut the roses with, maybe. 

When Hamlet said to him, ‘I am too much i’ the sun,’ I thought to myself my child is burning. Some days he smolders, and some days he blazes, but his grief does not loosen its grip on his neck. When Hamlet said to him, ‘I am too much i’ the sun,’ I thought my child will not save himself and I don’t know how to help him. For a month every single thing my son has done has made the king furious, and Hamlet keeps dancing on the coals.

So when the king says to me, ‘Gertrude, do not drink,’ I shut my eyes because I am tired. He will kill my son today, and I cannot change that. ‘I will, my lord; I pray you, pardon me.’ And I drink. I can taste it, just a little, a little more bitter than a good wine should be. I drink deep, and then I set the glass down and look him in the eye.

Hamlet came to me as though mad and told me not to go to bed with the king, as though I have ever had a choice. As though I wanted to go to bed with his father, as though I ever wanted any of this. I look the king in the eye and I see that finally, I have taken something from him that he cannot take back.

When Hamlet said to him, ‘I am too much i’ the sun,’ I thought to myself my child will never stop laughing. He will die with a clever word on his tongue. His clever words will kill him. I can feel the poison spread through my veins, or maybe I’m imagining it. I think about Ophelia and I wonder if all of us, really, are the same.

C.M. Green (they/them) is a Boston-based writer with a focus on history, memory, gender, and religion. They are a Flash Fiction editor at JAKE and a Prose and Hybrid Reader at Adobe Press. Their work has been published by Bullshit Lit, Roi Faineant, and elsewhere. You can find them at cmgreenwrites.com, or on Twitter @cmgreenery.