the bull dancers:

So, one way of looking at it —
the minotaur and Minos are one
and the same, the king, the servant, the beast,
none moreso, none the least, the father,
the son, the ravager,
the triad we do not look upon, we mention not
fearful the side we hide
be seen by innocent eyes —
how can a good man be bad?

Imagine the  bull dancer, the daughter, then —
in the ritual she knows intimately
and hides from all humanity, especially the mother;

the darkness encloses her, deep-sea octopus tentacles,
with suckers that attach and drag her back,
a tangle she cannot evade,
even as she tries to sleep as a means to escape
she hears all manner of things that move
inside her room, and out,
little noses that expand into terror,
known bumps and scratches that twist into noises
brimming with sinister intent

and then, as it is in the way of things,
just as she falls asleep
the bedroom door opens and the parent
in the daytime enters as the beast.

So many children must navigate
the labyrinth
yet when they make a mistake,
even years later,
we never look at the direct line back
to the terrible consequence
of that nightly stumbling around in that terrain,
we call out choice and free will and forgetfulness or worse
how the victim must always forgive —

the truth is we know the minotaurs fate,
we remember Theseus as the hero,
we even recall Icarus and Daedalus,
those who constructed the maze,

but the bull dancers,
those children who danced across the horns,
what do we remember of them at all?

Or if we do recall those innocents
that fell or escaped, we do so
with little more than a moment or two,
too determined we are to remain in the sunlight
and not remember the maze some
are consigned to through no choice of their own —
yet how did their lives unfold
those rescued...and those not?