Emperor Caligula declared war on Poseidon and ordered his soldiers to thrust their spears into random, threatening, foaming waves.<\/p>\n
I approach wearing only a gauntlet. I slap her pale cheek with the heavy glove creating a small, bloody crack in her perfection. I remove the violent hand covering. Naked, I toss it, and it lands on the cutting, shell\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n
Offended, she tries to pierce my eye with her slave Cupid\u2019s arrow.<\/p>\n
Refusing to be blinded by love\u2019s aggression, I duck my head and spit in her navel cavern.<\/p>\n
I pounce on her and intertwine my legs with hers. I Indian leg wrestle her. I flip her.<\/p>\n
She submits.<\/p>\n
She offers no wishes. She is a defeated goddess not a genie. She offers to answer one prayer.<\/p>\n
\u201cVenus, please bring him back to me even if he never loves me or recognizes me. I just want to see his face one more time. I just want to breathe in the molecules that once caressed him. Or, if I can\u2019t have that, please let me forget him.\u201d<\/p>\n
She smiles enchantment and answers, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
I murder her and eat her hoping to take on her immortal soul. She, like me and other women of sea origin, was soulless. I eat love and am still empty.<\/p>\n
1<\/span><\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh is an author, activist and good friend keeping busy saving the world and sipping sweet tea on her front porch in Charlottesville, Virginia. She holds a BA in English from the University of Virginia.\u00a0 There, she won a Jefferson Cup for her story telling. She founded Peer Review, a literary and art magazine for the Charlottesville recovery community. Her work has appeared in Piker Press Magazine and the women\u2019s initiative\u2019s Challenge into Change 2013 anthology. She blogs regularly at\u00a0cvillewinter.wordpress.com<\/a>, a page featured in wordpress\u2019 freshly pressed, and also guest blogs at other sites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emperor Caligula declared war on Poseidon and ordered his soldiers to thrust their spears into random, threatening, foaming waves.<\/p>\n I approach wearing only a gauntlet. I slap her pale cheek with the heavy glove creating a small, bloody crack in her perfection. I remove the violent hand covering. Naked, I toss it, and it lands on the cutting, shell\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n Offended, she tries to pierce my eye with her slave Cupid\u2019s arrow.<\/p>\n READ MORE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":203,"featured_media":7538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,200,219],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/203"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7145"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7546,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145\/revisions\/7546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}