You think if you were to be a God, you’d be Athena.

For war and words have always beckoned you home.

When you sprung fully formed,

(all your father, and none of your mother)

they say there was book in one hand, and blood in the other.

I

As a child, you asked the words to make you softer because

the other children never played with you.

They just obeyed.

But, the pages always whispered stories back to you

when the world blurred past from between clouds:

tales of princesses and warriors alike that your father brandished as impossible.

He put a knife in your bloodied fingers and tried to pry the books away, but you hid them behind your back and learned to win with one hand.

II

Hera was always stronger than Zeus.

“Women do not read. They dance, sing, and make polite conversation.”

What a fool.

You had let yourself forget.

Even though you might be the strongest warrior, the cleverest scholar, you were

a

  l

    w

        a

            y

                s

        a woman first.

III

You don’t live on Olympus anymore, and you rarely see your father, but for the glances in the mirror.

War has left its mark on you, but your shield is still made of stories.

Between battles, you wrap your wounds and write.

Sometimes they are love letters, for the goddess of war loves as deeply as she fights.

Other times, you break down theories or your enemy’s strategies.

They all ask you

why you love to write, to read, when there is so much life to be found from behind a sword.

No one, but my brother Mars knows:

How wars are never sprung nor ended with weapons,

but sealed in words.

IV

I find solace in the in-betweens, for wars are not eternal.

There are no scholars available to me for they’ve all been slaughtered.

Instead, I visit libraries and book stores alike.

The honeyed phrases that fall off others’ lips, I catch and immortalize.

Hera holds no power over me anymore, but I bear her lessons with a straightened spine.

But now, I wear my hair loose over my scars, and a carry my books with both bloodied palms.