text: She was beautiful, like Aphrodite upon the earth; where she walked she inspired awe. The Myths say she changed for everyone, to look like their one true love. I always hoped I saw her for who she was, though I never asked. I never asked if her hair truly glittered like that, in rings of bronze like they were crafted by a smith, if only to grace her head and fall upon her back like a waterfall in the sunrise. I never asked if her eyes shone like serpentine, precious stones grown from the Earth. Her skin was as smooth as the water of the lake where I grew up and where I had been baptized. That me was dead and long forgotten. Perhaps she was my messiah. Her gaze was that of a prophet, she searched for your meaning when her eyes met yours as if she was reading a book left unattended. As she searched you couldn’t help but feel breathless, a goddess that was giving you her full attention demanded yours. I couldn’t help but feel, if only for an instant, that she really could see me, like none ever had. Her gaze was sharp and deciphering, but her smile was home. Her smile was ease, the warmth of a hearth on a chilly summer night, the light of the sun after a long winter. From her lips came her voice, smooth and sweet like milk and honey, and I had found my promised land. I had been lead to salvation by her glow, her burning light, and I was a new woman, bathed in the flames of her love and reborn from the ashes of the woman I once was. Our love was a fire, while it lasted. The burning of soft touches and kisses goodbye, like a wonderful sunburn; warm and perpetual. Her voice floated over me like a summer breeze, and I couldn’t help but bask in her gentle timber. She told me things, wonderful things. Visions of a world beyond and times past. The stories were never ending, and she told them wonderfully. I couldn’t help but listen to every word. She loved me, she said. She never wanted to leave. She never wanted to leave. No one is perfect, as I soon came to learn. Through her deific façade, one could see the cracks formed under the pressure. She was Atlas, the sky upon her shoulders, but she couldn’t admit her struggle and allow for defeat. Whilst she carried her burden, she smiled and laughed as if nothing was wrong, she was not holding the sky from crushing the Earth. I only learned too late of her battle against the stars, and I wished I had known the extent sooner. The cracks had spread out across everything. I was appalled that I hadn’t noticed the signs sooner, her back breaking under the pressure and the sweat falling along her brow. She had once been my savior, guiding me out of the darkness. For that moment I was hers. The roof was cold and windy, lights from surrounding buildings sparkling like a cold reflection of the stars. The light rain that had fallen throughout the day caused the air to have a biting, wet kind of cold that seeps into your very bones and chills like no other. Ambient sounds, the cars below us and the pattering of water all around, were quieted in the deafening silence. She stood there like a ghost, pale and hollow and nothing like the woman I once knew. Once I knew her as my goddess, my savior, my reckoning. I stood before her with a benediction on my lips. All in an instant, I stood there, once again godless and alone.