By Olivia Udoye

I bury my head in the folds of her dress; her thin lips twist into a smile, sweet like honey and  so captivating that it could calm a god’s fury. She runs her delicate fingers through my hair,  her touch leaving an electric trembling on my skin. I could watch her forever and ever, I could  trace my gaze along every inch of her beautiful face – the bronze tone of her skin like trees  cast in sunlight, her hazel eyes calling me with their ambrosia-like allure, her soft auburn curls  flowing over her shoulders like the waterfalls where the naiads braid each other’s hair. 

She recites Sappho to me, but I don’t listen to the poet’s words, I only hear her voice. The  poems are wonderful, sentences strung together to sculpt something that can only be called  art. But her voice… how could I hear Sappho when I listen to Pallas? How could a poet stir  my perception when a poem has captured all my senses? 

Sometimes I ask myself if she sees me like I see her – the only person in the world that  matters, the only person in the world I would fight for, even die for. But I fear the answer,  what if I love her more than she loves me? 

I glance at her, the question in my eyes, hoping she is fluent in my wordless language. She  grins at me. “Of course I love you, Athena. More than life.” More than life… it would mean  nothing if it came from a god. We, the Olympians, do not know the value of life, we are like  rich merchants – too wealthy to understand the worth of their fortune. We do not think about  life – we simply possess it. But oh, what a promise from someone who can truly grasp the  meaning of life, whose life can end. 

I lean my head against hers and fold my arms around her mortal body. She needs to be  protected, this treasure of mine, this goddess without godhood. 

She bends down and dips her fingers into the little creek running next to us. The water giggles  and chats cheerfully, like we do when glances and embraces are not enough. The trees bow 

towards us as if they want to conceal us from unholy eyes that do not devote their being to the  deity called love. 

Pallas gingerly lays her fingers on my temples and kisses my cheek. I hope this moment will  never end. 

Blood shrouds the sand where Pallas lies. I stand still in horror, thinking her death will  become a reality when I move. If I stand still long enough, then I will wake from this  nightmare, Pallas will lie next to me, and her embrace will chase away the fears of night. 

But I do not wake up. Pallas does not embrace me. My fears are no illusions, they are truths. I  sink to the ground and crawl towards the life I annihilated. How could I do this? How can I  undo this? How I wish it were me, lying there with hollow eyes and crimson sprinkled over  my white toga. How I wish it were me, dead and destroyed, doomed to be forgotten by  everyone but the people who love me. But it is her, Pallas; dead and hollow-eyed, Pallas;  crimson and destroyed. 

“Wake up, Pallas, please, my dear, wake up”, I whisper into her ear, “You know I need you.  How could I ever be without you, Pallas? You are my soul; you are a completion of myself. I  am only half without you. Do not leave me here as an incomplete being, do not let me live  half a life, be half a person.” 

She remains silent, her lips are half opened but they cannot speak for her anymore. Her eyes  are open like she still sees the blue sky above her. I want her to look at me one last time, I want her gaze to pierce my eyes. But there is no gaze on her face, there are only glass marbles  where her warm eyes belong.

I hug her empty shell, and I tell myself to hold her forever, nobody shall touch her, nobody  shall see her in this vulnerable state of lifeless vacancy. Nobody shall remember her as  anything other than living, laughing, talking, walking, and reciting poems. 

But I know I cannot hold her forever, just like I knew she would not live forever. Just like I  knew she would be gone someday. 

I simply did not expect it to happen so soon. I always assumed we would have enough time to  love each other, enough time to replace an eternity of love. But I killed her, and there is an  emptiness inside my heart, where her soul belongs. 

Why am I a goddess, why do I have to be lonely? She died a long time ago, but she was  luckier than me: She did not die alone. I must bear eternity without my love. I killed her and  now I must carry the weight of my punishment on my shoulders. Guilt consumes me and it  will never not consume me. I feel it in my veins; rushing through my blood, in my heart;  pumping through my body, in my bones; carrying me through life. It is everywhere but no one  can see it. The others know nothing of pain and guilt. They only know love; they know love’s  blessings and its hardships. But they could never understand the guilt of ruining your own  happiness and ending someone else’s life. The Olympians have blood on their hands. But not  their lovers’ blood. They have crushed bones before; but only their enemies’. They have  broken countless hearts; but never their own. 

I am like Prometheus, but my eagle is eternal love for somebody who lives no longer. Maybe  she is still here, somewhere. But she is not Pallas anymore, she is the wind and the ocean, she  is the stars and the night, she is everything she could not be when she was alive, she is  immortal, more than a goddess; she is the universe in all its glory and humanity. But she is not 

the nymph Pallas, she is not the girl I have held in my arms. Still, I will love every version of  her, dead or alive, nymph or nature, forever gone or omnipresent. 

“I will stay loyal, Pallas”, I whisper into the air, because deep down I know that she can hear  me, “I will never love somebody else again. I will love you enough for the whole of eternity.”

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