To whom it may concern:

You have found me, hanging limply by a noose

fashioned with trembling hands. I could barely see

as I tied the cord around the joist in the ceiling.

I could not live with the horrors I discovered.

To think I slept with my son - to think our children

burst from the same womb as he! The terrible incest

that occurred in the bed I shared with my husband,

the father whom Oedipus brutally murdered! He shed

his father's blood, and entered his own mother.

My children, forever unclean with their brother's blood

pulsing through their veins!

My dearest brother, please care for the children

I leave orphaned. Oedipus is no longer fit to see them.

See that he leaves them at once. I cannot allow my kin

to bear the shame that we have passed to them.

Bury me under the tree we used to play in as children.

Oedipus, my lover, my son, forgive me.

I loved you, but I can no longer bear to hold

the guilt that encompasses me. I fulfilled the prophecy

by trying to defy it. Let it be a life lesson: never try to

change your future. You will end up exactly where

you were destined to be.

I shall join my dear husband in the afterlife.

With this noose, I shall no longer know the pain

which fills my shameful heart. Farewell.

Iocastê