When He Says That You’re a Goddess

You go home with the first guy you meet because he tells you that you are a goddess. You imagine you are Persephone, Goddess of Spring, because of the floral notes in your perfume. Because you are the wife of Hades, running out of time.

One hour before your perpetually angry husband gets home, one week before he finds out about your tryst, one year before you do the same thing all over again, to spite him. Before he left the house tonight, you told him to go to hell, but he’s already there, already spewing hellfire across his life and yours.

The kind stranger from the bar says you look so young for your age. You are a maiden again, in his eyes. He motions for you to sit next to the pizza-sauce stain on his couch, moves in to kiss your pomegranate lips, your teeth tugging his bottom lip as he does. The Queen of the Underworld does not want to go home. Only regret awaits you if you leave. Only regret also if you stay. You decide to stay.

The night your husband leaves for good is not as joyous as you had imagined it would be. It feels more like the emptiness after pushing a baby from your body.

You head back to the bar, because you cannot be alone tonight. You are the Immaculate Virgin Mary, starting fresh, untouched. Plus, the next guy you meet is into the whole Madonna-whore thing. You find yourself sitting on his couch—is it possible this one has a crusted stain on it too?—being kissed, the Queen of Heaven observing no sensation in the meeting of your lips with this mortal.

You are the Mother Most Pure, contemplating how long the sauce-crust under your fingertips has been stuck to the couch. He takes your face in his hands and tells you he’s always wanted to kiss a goddess like you. Bored by his earnestness, you divert your attention to the rain falling outside. Sometimes, when you leave a cardboard box in the rain, it melts into a flat paper puddle, and sometimes, that box is your heart.

The newly divorced, single mother Ambika, that’s you these days. You’re using a baby wipe from your purse to clean the jelly stain off the couch of a man much younger than you and wondering how late the sitter can stay tonight.

He stares at your chest a little too much, teases you a little too much, calling you a cougar, a cradle-robber, a MILF, but you are the goddess Yakshi. You’re not going to let his mommy issues get in the way of your fun tonight. You toss the baby wipe on the table and check your phone. No messages. You want to stay late, want to teach this young man things only an older woman knows, want to show him how to rub that one spot on a woman’s foot that can practically make her come.

The young bachelor excuses himself to get you more wine. You are Śāsana Devī Ambai, firing off a quick text to the sitter, putting your phone on Do Not Disturb, and slipping off your shoes.

Congratulations, you have entered your ho phase, you rich-throned, immortal Aphrodite, you! You have kissed countless young men on countless stained couches, and here you are again, an unholy Androphonos. You are kissing Bachelor No. Infinity, mentally calculating how long you have to stay, how much you have to do in order to be polite, in order to seem grateful.

Because this is all simply a transaction, isn’t it? He says you have killer legs and a killer smile, but what about your killer mind? Your murdered heart? You’ve been trying hard to embrace your sexual liberation, but this doesn’t feel like freedom. You’re ready to clock out for the night. It’s late. The scheming daughter of Zeus moves to speed this whole thing up. Maybe a hand job will be enough. Maybe a blow job. What does he want in return for the dinner he bought you? When will the heavenly Venus have given enough?

This one’s profile says that he likes strong, independent women, so you arrive at his house as Deborah the Judge. You are all discernment and no patience now, a Prophetess. You’re sitting on what might as well be the same damn gravy-encrusted couch of the same damn guy as last time. You foresee this night not going well.

You’re not here for the sex, so why are you here? Are you afraid to die alone?

You avoid his advances by asking him how he makes his marinara sauce. He rambles about tomato peeling for twenty minutes straight, as if you don’t know how to peel tomatoes. You are the Torch Woman, your judgment is an intrusive thought, a knife through his temple.

Sensing your distaste, he hands you a goat-cheese-stuffed date, says he got the recipe from The New York Times. You swat his hand away and stand abruptly, declaring your ruling as you slam the door behind you. What kind of person makes the fucking recipes from The New York Times, anyway?

It’s Self-Care Sunday and you are Bastet, protector of health. You stroke cleansing balm across your face, apply a clay mask to remove the impurities, and lay down on your pristine couch with your phone on silent. Your cat forms a loaf on your chest and her weight grounds you, her purrs reverberating through you both. You touch foreheads with her, seeking wisdom.

Despite all these usual measures, peace alludes you. Instead, a bitterness pools at the back of your mouth. Your jaw clenches against an imagined acidity, like when you salivate just for thinking of something sour. Your quest for unconditional love has curdled. You’ve spent your whole life as the Sacred and All-Seeing Eye, taking care of everyone else, giving until you have nothing left to give, being everything for everyone and so becoming no one in particular. The hot ache in the center of your chest cools into something hard, impenetrable.

The daughter of Ra has come to a decision. What will your dad think? Your ex? Your hot-headed sister? You realize you finally don’t care. It’s time for a new moon. If it’s a goddess they want from you, you have just the one to show them. You reach for your phone, reinstall Hinge, and hunt for your final date.

You are the soul-eating, life-creating Empress Kali, goddess of destruction and renewal. In every rebirth there is a death, and tonight it’s time to begin anew. You are standing akimbo on the back of the couch of this last everyman, ready to give him what he needs. Four arms now stretch from your torso, dark blue like night encroaching, and envelop the man in your grip. You make all the rules now.

You bite his tongue hard down the middle, hot salty blood like pizza sauce waterfalling from his lips. You smile, the Mother of the Universe, as he pulls away in horror, your lips benevolent and glistening with his blood. You throw him

to the floor as he wails and stand atop his chest in all your omnipotence, screeching up into the heavens you have created and down across the earth whose death you will one day bring. The Great Time strikes a match. You want to burn this crusty couch, burn the house down with him inside, burn the whole world down to create yourself anew.

But, you are not Kali, are you? You are not Bastet or Deborah, Aphrodite or Ambika. Not the Virgin Mary. Not Persephone. After a lifetime of morphing yourself into what everyone else wants you to be, it’s time to cast out idols.

You step off his chest, blow out the match, and walk out the door. Four arms become two again, and fade from midnight blue as you head home towards the sun rising in front of you. You wipe the blood from your mouth. The hardness in your chest begins to loosen its grip and you exhale, finally exhale, like you’ve been holding your breath for a lifetime. You feel the sun spreading warmth against your cheeks, casting a halo across your head.

You are, immutably, divinely, you.

What name will you give yourself, O Holy One?