Life of the Goddess
by Chloe Hanson

Perhaps your body was not a body at all
but an ectoplasmic layer of spirit-skin
over spirit-bones light and hollow, like a bird’s,
and perhaps
 
you watched those first bodies crawl
from the ocean that was the world to the first
green places. Perhaps they were pink and soft,
buoyed up on the tongues of great oysters
nestled like pearls.
 
Perhaps you saw them break like brittle
shells, white bones sharp and delicate
pushing through skin and sinew, painted red,
and you showed yourself to them, so that you
too could feel, could be.
 
Perhaps they carved your likeness in marble,
perhaps they fashioned it from the cleaned carcasses
of their kills.  When they gave their children to you
run through with swords of bronze and steel,
perhaps you grew stronger, and wished you had not.
 
When they forgot your name, forgot
to re-christen you, forgot the stories and the idols,
the crumbling remnants of your image, perhaps
you returned to the ocean they once crawled from
and let yourself be carried off, white foam on the water.