This is yet another short story of mine, it is about a poet that found out that demigods are worshipped in wine. She glorifies her love with words for she can not worship his skin with her hands.

Short Story -Demigods are Worshipped in Wine

This night was like many others. She was preparing her space to write poetry. It was as if she was preparing to worship a God of a sort – with a bottle of Shiraz on the table and Chopin on the recorder, she set orange and cinnamon-scented candles up in her room.

It was natural for her to wallow in her longing through words. One verse after another, she escaped the harsh reality of her solitude. As if she lived her life wrapped in the soft, sweet candy cotton of a faerie tale. And it was hard to tell if she was drunk on wine, the piano, the poetry, or the muse himself – it was hard to differentiate.

But as of late, her poetry had become bittersweet. It had a touch of madness, a taste of obsessions she could never say out loud – she seemed to glorify a love that eluded her. Perhaps demigods are worshipped in wine and poetry. After all, she wrote about him as if he was one. Her words had edges that could easily lacerate your skin and leave you bleeding. It is not a secret that words have always had power over readers. But with the power that they had over her,  she was defenceless. The love that engulfed her had turned into a vicious beast that was feasting on her heart.

But did she love? Or was she portraying the feelings onto someone in order to feel? It was no secret that she had confined herself to a chosen solitude and wasn’t looking for a man she could wrap her arms around and call hers. The love she knew was the kind that could make a mortal man cry out in pain, for it was unanswered.

She had dreamed about his hands way too often not to write prose that claimed them to be that of a God. She longed for those hands to brush through her hair, and wander on her skin as if it was a map to heaven. To hold hers lovingly when she walked the streets in the moonlight.

Their only son would rarely visit his mother. It didn’t make sense to him how he could be so cold. Over the past three months, his visits had become rare. He would say, “Let her go, Dad,” and that sentence alone filled him with resentment toward his son. How could he let her go so easily? Didn’t he love his mother? How could a child ever utter such words? And so, the only way he knew to hurt his son was to stop talking to him, as if he never had a son in the first place.

He recalled the day Veronica had come home with a radiant smile on her face, a smile brighter than the July sun. She ran into his arms, her feet dangling above the floor, and exclaimed, “We’re going to have a baby, Alex! We are having a baby!” It took him by surprise, as they had been trying for three years and had given up after numerous visits to the doctors. It had shattered Veronica’s heart. And so, he was happy, happy to see her joyful again.

With each thought, he felt his eyelids growing heavier, battling sleep deprivation. Before he knew it, he was dancing with Veronica on the riverbank, and he realized he had lost the war. Holding her close, her blonde locks cascading and the scent of strawberries lingering in the air, he tightened his grip around her waist. He was afraid to avert his gaze from her face, uncertain if his heart could bear losing her.

They stood there, locked in a gaze as if time itself had halted along with their feet. Her blue eyes shimmered like the river. “Alex, it’s time. Come with me,” she spoke like the most innocent woman in the entire universe, and the melody behind her words calmed his mind. She was beautiful, like an angel, and he desired nothing more than to go with her.