I sit across a table from a mortal bleeding out

as the cruel touch of admiration flays her alive

for to think of a person as more than a person is to kill them

and when they called her a myth

it is like they took the mind from the body

took the roots from a twisting willow tree

took the forces of gravity from the earth and sent the oceans flying

and careening into the air

they ask me to save her, to staunch the flow of scalding force of life

out of her so upright form

but I look in her eyes and see misery

so I refuse.

look what they have done to her. and to me,

handing me the lungs of the afterlife and begging me to sing

they have learned to carve from marble what is only from the air

they took what is rooted in the loving earth

what is rich, what is flourishing, what will never cease to

bloom. they took what is of rivers,

and blackbirds

and mothers

and they stood. letting it spill from their lips that they have taught the cosmos

to shine brighter

but I dissent

and at the site of all decay, I ponder

how they called Sappho

the tenth muse

burned her books and hallowed her name

like it was theirs to hold in reverence

I swipe my finger through the stains

of creation upon the abiotic

and I raise a glass with shaky hands

to the poetess,

to the true