Have you ever met a god?
Have you ever been washed of your sin just by someone's laughter?
Have you ever felt a hand or an arm brush against your own and felt a shock of lightning-
Crafted by Zeus's own hands-
And thought,
"This is what it feels like to be blessed."
The first time I felt this I was in a cafe.
I had sat at a circular table and in front of me sat a boy.
He was hunched over, nose in a book, headphones in,
The true definition of 'Untouchable.'
He was untouchable in the way that the sun was untouchable
And he absorbed the knowledge of his textbook the same way
Apollo absorbed his energy from the sunlight.
And upon seeing this boy I felt myself warm,
Felt golden sunlight wash over my skin and drown me in the music of the gods.
The next time I was in a bookshop.
I was in line to purchase my second copy of my favorite book and the clerk was a girl.
She had curly brown hair and crooked teeth and a laugh that sounded like church bells.
And when she told me she loved that book and began reciting quotes like a priest recites sermons
I was convinced she was Aphrodite.
It is legend that Aphrodite could change forms into what you find most desirable and she was desirable and I was desiring.
And when we parted I felt my heart break
So I bottled the piece that fell off and gifted it to her.
Most recently I was taking a writing class.
I sat in the only empty seat from day one and found myself next to someone.
They had short cropped hair and scribbled in their notebook as if never losing inspiration.
They were a genderless being, surpassing all binaries, like gods surpass physics
Their eyes surpassed physics as they looked at me
Bluer than the cleanest body of water,
Their eyes were the puddles the water nymph muses danced on,
Singing their songs of art and inspiration and filling me up with their blue eyed ideas
Until I felt full enough to write this poem.
These encounters with gods will not stop there.
They will continue until my heart is wrung dry,
Until I have no pieces of myself left to give and when I run out,
When my heart lay a shriveled, raisined mass on the bottom of my ribcage
I will offer up my ribs.
I will offer up the voice that raises too quickly,
I will offer up the hands that are too shaky,
I will offer up the lungs that are too heavy,
I will offer up every inch of myself
To get rid of myself.
I will use the knife that I used to carve my flesh with and cutaway locks of my hair, chunks of my bone, fingers, femurs, flesh, feet, full portions of my broken body.
I package parts of myself and give them as gifts,
as sacrifices like sheep to the gods,
as if sending myself to the slaughter is something holier than the breath I was given.
And when there is nothing left of me,
When I am finely crushed dust in the palm of your hands,
Maybe the wind will pick me up and take me to Olympus.
Maybe I, too, will finally be god-like.
And then, maybe I need to stop viewing people as gods.
Maybe I need to realize that this isn't a polytheistic world
And maybe I need to realize that I am the only god that I need to worship.
