When I stopped and called for my spear
from Deiphobus,
my voice did what it always does at the end:
it pretended there was still someone beside me.
Nothing answered.
Not the shadow I had trusted,
not the shoulder that had leaned in so close
I could feel the warmth of agreement,
the little yes, yes, yes
that people offer like a paper cup of water
when they know you are thirsty.
The hallway lights kept their buzz.
The office printer kept chewing.
Outside, the city kept making its ordinary weather.
Inside, I stood with my hand half-raised
as if a weapon could arrive
because I said a name correctly.
Only then did I understand
that the gods have become fluent
in everyday disguises.
They wear the face of a friend
who told you, last week,
I am with you.
They wear the tone of a text
arriving at the exact right time
to keep you walking into the room.
They wear a calendar invite.
They wear the soft authority of a smile
that says, There is nothing to fear,
while arranging the chairs
so that you will be alone in the centre.
I had seen deception in grand stories,
in statues, in painted ceilings,
in old lines recited with reverence.
This one arrived in sneakers.
It arrived in the break room
where someone had written their name
in thick black marker on a carton of milk,
as if ownership could be made sacred
by a permanent pen.
It arrived in the kind of conversation
that begins with concern
and ends with a door closing quietly.
They had laughed with me.
They had placed their hand on my back
as if guiding me through a crowd.
They had practised my confidence
like a language they wanted to speak well.
And then, at the moment my body needed proof,
they became air.
You learn betrayal first as a sound:
a silence with edges.
It pierces because it is clean,
because it does not need an argument,
because it does not announce itself
with drama or thunder.
It is the chair that stays empty
when you look up mid-sentence.
It is your name spoken differently
by people who used to speak it gently.
It is the group chat that goes still
after you ask,
Are we still doing this together?
It is your own pulse
starting to speak over everyone else.
My spear, in this life,
was not bronze.
It was the screenshot I thought I would never need.
It was the email thread,
the careful documentation,
the too-patient evidence of good faith.
It was the apology I rehearsed
for a fault that was not mine
because I wanted the world to remain coherent.
I called for it anyway.
I called for the one person
who had stood beside me yesterday
and said,
If anything happens, I will be there.
I called, and there was no Deiphobus.
Only the gods,
polite and invisible,
moving through fluorescent light
as if light were not a revelation
but an instrument.
You never imagine the pyre
until you smell it.
Not smoke, not fire,
but the slow heat of being prepared.
A rumour, warmed and passed hand to hand.
A version of you, plated and served.
A story you did not consent to
arranged into neat portions,
so others can swallow it easily
and feel full.
They carry you there with kindness, too.
They tell you it is procedure.
They tell you it is for the best.
They tell you,
Do not take it personally,
as if the heart is capable
of turning personal off.
My hands wanted to rage.
My mouth wanted to make a scene
big enough to be remembered,
big enough to shame the room into honesty.
But the real violence of this kind of moment
is not the strike.
It is the necessity.
You still have to finish the meeting.
You still have to stand up straight.
You still have to make your voice
sound like a bridge
instead of a falling.
You still have to walk home.
On the subway platform
the yellow line kept warning me
without caring who had pushed whom.
The train arrived
like fate always does,
on time for everyone but mercy.
I watched strangers scroll, yawn, lean,
living their normal lives
beside my private battlefield.
No one looked up to see
a man with no spear
learning the shape of his loneliness.
There is a moment when you accept it,
not because you forgive,
not because you understand,
but because you recognize the machinery.
You recognize the way the world
sets you up with familiar faces
so you will walk forward without suspicion.
You recognize the disguised ally,
the borrowed voice.
You recognize that the betrayal
was never only a person.
It was a system that needed you unarmed.
So you do what Hector did,
in a corridor that smells like coffee
instead of dust.
You gather what remains of you
without ceremony.
You stop begging the air
to become a friend again.
You let the room keep its buzzing lights.
You let them keep their story.
You hold your fate
as calmly as you can hold a knife
that is already inside you.
And when you step into the moment
that will brutalize your name,
you do it with your eyes open.
You do it knowing
the gods have deceived you
and the deception was ordinary,
and that is what makes it unbearable.
You do it anyway.
You stop.
You call for your spear
from Deiphobus.
Nothing answers.
And the silence,
that clean, sharp, familiar silence,
leads you forward
as if it has always known the way
to the pyre.
