On Becoming Mortal

They taught us the body is a city

the gods may enter at will.

So I learned early how to lock my gates.

Apollo came first—

not with plague, but with measure.

He laid his lyre across my ribs

and said: only what is tuned survives.

I listened.

Demeter passed me by in winter.

Her hands were full,

and I pretended not to be starving

so she would not stop.

I told myself this was discipline.

The earth believed me.

I counted like a priestess.

Seeds. Hours. Bones.

Every omission felt like prophecy.

Every hollow place, a shrine.

At the river, I met Narcissus—

not beautiful, not ruined,

just endlessly looking.

The water lied with perfect clarity.

I bent until my name fell out of my mouth.

Even Achilles learned to make himself smaller.

They speak only of his rage,

never of the way he tried

to be only the blade

and not the hand that shook around it.

Hunger is an underworld god.

Once you know his roads,

he always knows how to find you again.

He taught me devotion through absence,

called it purity,

asked for everything.

There are no songs for the bodies t

hat survive by refusing to disappear.

No epics for girls who choose bread

over silence.

Yet some nights, Persephone returns.

She smells like wheat and dusk.

She reminds me the earth opens

not only to swallow,

but to release.

I am learning

that being alive is not a betrayal.

That taking up space

is not hubris.

That even the gods,

for all their power,

were afraid of becoming human.