Mud Woman

This story was told to me by another traveler, just passing through. It took place in a foreign country, as everything does. 


When he was young he and another boy constructed a woman out of mud. She began at the neck and ended at the knees and elbows: they stuck to essentials. Every sunny day they would make love to her, sinking with ecstasy into her moist belly, her brown wormy flesh where small weeds had already rooted. They would take turns, they were not jealous, she preferred them both. Afterwards they would repair her, making her hips more spacious, enlarging her breasts with their shining stone nipples. 


His love for her was perfect, he could say anything to her, into her he spilled his entire life. She was swept away in a sudden flood. He said no woman since then has equaled her. 


Is this what you would like me to be, this mud woman? Is this what I would like to be? It would be so simple. 


Margaret Atwood 
From “Circe/Mud Poems”