i want to be the goddess you keep chained up in your basement. in the beginning, when i thought i was human, i used to struggle and scream and fight back. now i take your offerings with grace, accepting your worship and that of the new flock of devotees you’ve brought to me. i take their sins into my body and allow their lips and tongues and fingers to wash me clean at the end of their penitence. you collect the alms they leave for me so i do not need to concern myself with the tedium of humanity’s greed. when you take of my body in holy communion, my high priest, you leave me in exquisite agony or ecstatic pleasure. the ambrosia you feed me keeps me soothed, even as this earthly realm would have me give over to base fear. you all see to my mortal body, keeping it clean and fed, while your worship touches my divine self and drives us all closer and closer to ascendancy. i am the goddess of this temple and i cannot leave it, but i do not need to. the bars around my altar are there to frame my beauty and contain my divinity. if i were to leave, i would cease to exist. what is a goddess without her temple, without her devoted worshipers? what would become of me if i were to fall mortal once more?
