I loved being me,
I liked knowing where the boundaries
Between myself and others were.
Lord Apollo has no boundaries,
Especially not with women.
Can you blame me for running from him?
Big game hunter,
Bright like the sun,
Widely praised as having
The most fabulous hair?
When he met me, he said
"I'm Apollo,"
And that's it.
He looked at me expectantly,
I barely knew what he wanted.
He was trying to bleed over into me,
And I'm not into that.
Yeah he knows what people think of him,
And he agrees,
And I don't know if I want
To hang out
With people who don't know others' worth
As well as their own.
Lord Apollo doesn't,
Cause he's chasing me like I'm a deer,
Worth a trophy,
Like the ones that line Zeus' banquet hall.
No thanks,
I'll have no part of
Motionlessly
Watching over others' happiness
For eternity.
He's still behind me when I turn to look back,
And he keeps shouting out the name of love,
But it's Ares' eyes,
Not Aphrodites',
That I see leering at me through the trees.
This isn't courting,
This is a War of Attrition.
He'll chase and he'll chase even if,
At the end,
He'll only have caught up to my dead body,
Stretched out in exhaustion,
Tongue lolling out.
No matter, he'll just
Hoist me up by the antlers
And take a picture.
I call out to my father,
Because who else do we trust to
Run off our unwelcome suitors?
He says there's little he can do
To curb the lust of a man who so outranks him.
Because that's all that matters among men, right?
So I say "what's the little you can do?"
And he says,
"Fight fire not with fire,
But with the things that grow plants:
Water, time, and patience."
And I feel a seed sprout in my stomach.
Yes!
Trees are notoriously unfuckable!
I still have to outrun Apollo for a little while,
But the transformation is already starting,
And what's a better way to evade ****,
Than just not being a woman?
It's getting hard to run,
My lungs are already wooden,
And when my knees bend, they creak.
I have to stop now or I'll certainly crack and break,
But it feels lovely to take root,
Feet pushing down into the soil and
Becoming feet no more.
Oh, but here comes Apollo,
And he melodramatically sighs,
"Oh! To behold the transformation that now
Ends your lovely life!"
What a stupid person,
I'm not ending,
I'm becoming.
He's finally caught me,
And for a few seconds,
Flesh touches flesh,
But, thankfully,
I become a tree before he can get a ***** in.
I settle into the bark walls I have made part of myself,
And get ready to eat sunlight for a near eternity.
If I still had a face, it would be smiling,
That is,
Until Lord Apollo,
His most highly unsubtle deer-mangler,
Rips a ******* limb off of me.
Now my consciousness is split
Between myself the tree,
And myself, the laurel wreath trophy,
Which Lord Apollo wears,
And Heroes, in his name, wear.
Oh, I should have known that to
Him
And men like him,
Whether I was a woman or a tree did not matter,
They only wanted to use me,
And they were Hellbound to find a way.
