Pandora married Cain.

What comes out when you open the door? What indeed.  

A little grief. A little boredom. A little flavor...perhaps a seed. Perhaps a thread. A pattern that will shape your days...or those of others? 

Perhaps monsters. The children of Pandora.

You know she was raped.

You know she bore in secret – monsters that no one could love, whom she nevertheless held close to her aching breasts. Until one day the door opened, and they flooded out, away from the curve of her slender arms, leaving her profoundly alone. Except for little Hope, her youngest.  

It was never a box. They only called it that after. When they remembered how it was smaller than they wanted it to be. It was a home, after all. 

But if you never open the door, then no one knows. The mystery excites. Then it persists. Then it becomes stale. So much dust, the crumbs of a dry cookie, no longer delicious.  

Don’t fear. Or fear, but don’t freeze. Your hand on the doorknob. A breath from opening. The slightest pressure in the tips of your fingers, all that it needed.  

Hesitation a living thing resting his back against the door. Blocking nothing, but radiating a physical presence. A sense of energy, that makes the hairs on the back of your arms raise.  

He is invisible, you know it. But he is one of Pandora’s brood. Perhaps the largest, and surely by now, the fattest. 

Everyone blamed Pandora. It was cruel of them, but what woman would claim surprise at that twist of fate?  

Pandora though, she would have laid down her life, drained the blood from her veins, if it would have stopped that door from opening. Stopped her children as they rushed forward. Forward is away. 

They say the monsters could never come back. Never again be gathered. But Pandora, and little Hope, they wait still. They lurk by the door. And their desire is for Cain.

 But he never came back either.

המבין יבין

This poem draws on the parallels between Genesis 3:16 and Genesis 4:7, connecting sin, desire, and control, to the narratives of Eve and Cain, with Pandora representing the archetype of female guilt and sexuality that flows from Eve in the Western cannon.