At Last

You’re infuriating. You’re kind of an asshole and a little bit of a bitch but I'm not saying I necessarily mind, you know? You weren't always like this but I can’t say this isn’t the version of you I love best. Then again, that’s what I say in every version of us that exists.

“You didn’t have to curse her.”

The objection in my voice is pretty much only there for appearances’ sake. I don’t really care what happens to mortals. I also don’t really mind if you curse everyone who so much as looked at you wrong. I’m used to you throwing out curses as your natural defense mechanism. I’m also used to you hogging the blankets, drooling on my shoulder and walking in on me taking a shit just so you can discuss Stucky theories. I don’t really care at this point if you curse half of New York or half the world but an annoying voice at the back of my head tells me that the little sway I have over you should maybe, possibly, be used for good, whatever ‘good’ means.

I’m supposed to tell you that you shouldn’t give your fourth therapist (this month) warts the size of cauldrons all over her body and have all of her hair quickly falling out in clumps. I’m supposed to perhaps cure her and wipe her memory of what you’ve just done. However, I’m kind of busy trying to not laugh at the way you are somehow smug about the woman writhing in pain on the caramel colored carpet and yet also stubbornly glaring at me as if this were all my fault. Which it’s not.

You’re glaring at me (this is not new or out the ordinary) with your arms crossed over your chest and the snakes in your hair are all standing up, no longer wrapped around your head and resting - each one is hissing and rolling, poised to strike.

I’ve seen you turn hundreds, maybe thousands of men and others to stone. I’ve seen you draw blood in battle and smite heroes who have tried to cut your head off. I’d be terrified if I were anyone else and if I wasn’t Neith born into a new body - I mean, what else is being a goddess good for? It’s gotten me a good amount of luck in this life and I’m sure in the next too since I find my way back to you every time.

Your slender fingers are tightly clenched into fists when you uncross your arms and my fingers unravel them in case your sharp nails might cut your calloused palms. When your back tenses, you pull your shoulders into a straight line and wear a beautiful smile full of sharp teeth that screams a murderous confidence. No one would dare challenge you on it. It’s okay - I know this is the face you make when you don’t want anyone else to know how scared, how weak you feel.

Keeping the smile on your lips, your fingers slot themselves into their place against mine and in a casual tone, you say: “She asked me if my sexual assault turned me into a lesbian and if maybe I had tried looking for the right kind of man - a proper, god-fearing gentleman that I could enjoy myself with.”

Ugh. My intestines collectively roll and I instantly feel simultaneously nauseous enough to lose lunch and furious enough to kill the therapist - not because you need defense, but because in what fucking world is this woman allowed to counsel? In what world did she dare open her mouth to you like that?

This time, I squeeze your fingers with mine and take my free hand to pull at your earlobe - ah, there goes that face of annoyance - and kiss the corner of your mouth, purposefully missing so you chase after my lips again. After a second of softness, the woman who is somehow legally licensed as a therapist screams again, trying to scramble for her phone on the floor with warts covering her hands. And now I’m really wondering, I mean, what the fuck is she doing with her life?

I let your hand go and move towards the woman on the floor. Some of the buttons of her blouse are popping open, revealing more warts that lay beneath the fabric of her clothes. Leaning over the woman and wrapping my fingers around her neck isn’t hard. She shrieks and flails in my hands but my fingers remain firm, pressing into the pressure point just under her chin and throat, where I can feel a frantic heartbeat pounding. I hold my right hand at the back of her head and I can easily look into her mind and see all the thoughts of hate that made her who she was.

“Off with her head then,” I sigh.

You give out a small snort even though you follow it up with an adamant, “You’re not funny, Neith.”

“Really? Not at all? Like not even a little. I was sure I was a little bit punny,” I throw back at you with an obnoxiously wide smile just to annoy you. It must kind of work because you give an exasperated sigh and roll your eyes so hard I’m not convinced it doesn’t hurt or move your contacts around.

“Don’t kill her,” you say and I’m truly touched that your moral compass is less off kilter these days - it took us a long way to get here, you know.

“Fine,” I concede and take the woman’s head, knocking it into the ground so her curses and screams - something about faggots and prophets - abruptly stops and her eyes quickly shutter closed.

Knocking her out is a lot more satisfactory than I thought it would be. Just because I’m about wisdom and knowledge doesn’t mean I never learned how to handle a sword or my fist. I brush my hands like I’m the lead in one of those action films you like to watch at 2 AM and rise until I’m standing on my feet again. When I step over the unconscious therapist’s body and brush imaginary dirt off my shoulders you roll your eyes at me again, but this time you follow it up with a hard kiss that’s more teeth than tongue.



We pick up food from a Halal cart on our way to our apartment in Brooklyn and when you drop onto the couch as if just now dropping the weight of the world from your shoulders, my heart aches. I figure now is the perfect time to pull out my secret weapon: a full tub of sea salt caramel gelato. Because it can’t hurt, when our rice and chicken are all finished and you’re languidly eating spoonfuls of gelato, I pull out a Backwoods cigar, empty out the tobacco inside and start grinding some weed I picked up last night.

“You know I never thought gods would condone such behavior,” you drawl with your tongue out and flicking at the spoon caught at your mouth.

“Drugs have always been around,” I respond, making a face because your oral fixation and your contacts being swapped out for glasses should not turn me on so much.

You rub at your eyes, almost knocking off the thick black frames that rest on your nose but Bashe, one of your snakes, slips past the long dreads by your face and pulls the frame of the glasses so they lay correctly on your face. I watch your thumb dart to Bashe and rub the top of his head in thanks and the small hissing noise in the room strangely warms my heart. Your fingers play with your snakes without even recognizing you’re doing so, your free hand still spooning yourself gelato and once in a while - when I’m not busy concentrating on rolling this blunt - offers me a couple bites too. I think you know that I prefer the cookie dough flavor.I pretty much exclusively buy the sea salt caramel for you and your bad days.

When I’m finished licking at the tobacco leaves and sweeping the little trail of finely grained marijuana from the coffee table back into the ashtray, I start looking for the lighter by patting my pockets before realizing I don’t have pockets. Clothes in this century are fucking annoying.

“Here,” you grunt with multiple spoonfuls of gelato still in your mouth as your fingers deftly toss me your favorite black lighter.

I absolutely did not just fumble catching the lighter, I’m a God, Medha. I roll the black lighter over between my index finger and thumb and smile. The lighter has a skull with a splitting knife through the cranium and the bottom of it is decorated with an ouroboros snake. I gave this to you the first day we met outside some garage party near campus 5 years ago. I asked you to be my girlfriend the next night and you turned me down, but we got here in the end and that’s my favorite part of the story.

The flame that sparks up from the lighter quickly licks at the end of the blunt. I take the first hit, inhaling the familiar taste of bitter honey, tobacco leaves, and smoke. You’re already leaning over the table from the edge of the couch and the smirk on your lips isn’t part of a mask because you’re at home here - with me - which makes my muscles loosen. Instead of thinking about it, II lean over to catch your mouth in a kiss. I breathe into you and let you take the air - and smoke - from my lungs. Shotgunning, even if not as effective, is never something I’ll say no to when it’s you. I almost forget there’s more weed to smoke when we’re kissing like this, with your tongue wet and sliding against my lips but your hands tap mine and I remember to pull away long enough to pass you the blunt and let you get a couple hits in.

“C’mere,” you manage to say while taking another long drag.

You pat the cushion beside you and scoot over, making space even though there’s plenty of it on the large, black couch. We bought it a year ago specifically knowing we would fall asleep on it once or twice (also couch sex but mostly naps). I stand from the other side of the coffee table and wriggle out of my pants first then unclasp my bra too, dropping the offensive clothing to the floor. I throw myself onto the end of the couch with my knees open so you can fit in between my legs and put your back to my chest, sweeping your dreads and snakes to your side until your forehead is pressed against my collarbones. It’s complete bliss.

“Medha,” I murmur, not really having anything to say but wanting to say your name all the same.

Your eyes look up and there’s a small uptick to the corners of your lips that make me feel like you’ve just put wind underneath my wings. We take turns taking hits and later, when we’re comfortably enjoying the haze you start talking.

Your voice is quiet but I can hear the fury when you say, “I don’t get how people think we’re wrong for having this.”

“We’ve never been wrong. Not now, not last year, not when the rest of the mortals didn’t realize that they should be washing their asses instead of ushering in the Plague,” I point out but you already know this.

“She was just such an idiot. How could anyone ever think that I love you because he forced my hand? That he had enough power over me that he could have such control over my sexuality? As if the very reason I had denied him wasn’t because I have never been interested in men, let alone men like him? She tried to discount what we built - what we have together - and make me believe I was just a weak thing that would have a chance at love if my hair was less nappy and I was less picky in men.”

“You love me?”

I swear I meant to say something more intelligent than that. You caught me off guard, okay? I get flustered too, sometimes.

You scoff and nuzzle into my neck and if the clumsy kiss I smack onto your eyelids annoys you, you don’t protest this time.

“Idiot,” you grumble instead. “I’m not dignifying that with a response.”

“I love you too,” and to make sure your other eye doesn’t feel left out, I press another wet kiss to that one too, getting the corner of your eyebrow for good measure.

This doesn’t mean I’m forgetting or not angry. I’m angry at how that bitch was dismissive of you, you who are Medha, half girl, all venom. You with your smart-wit and bravery. You who makes our chaotic love a blossoming field of flowers in the middle of a thunderstorm. You who loves me.

That bitch clearly did not know who she was fucking with.

“She got what she deserved,” I grumble and feel the huff against my neck that means you agree. “I don’t even want to think about how many people she tried using conversion therapy on or cut into with racist microaggressions - how many people whose head she got into and fucked around with to make them feel like they weren’t supposed to be themselves. You own your autonomy and don’t need a masculine force in your life to give it sustenance.”

“Yeah,” you agree with me as Basha, Agunua, and Galeru slither up my neck and lick at my ears, trying to chew on my curls.

Your arm that’s hanging off the edge of the couch comes back around to wrap tightly around my side and you move so that you’re now laying face first into my neck, your front pressed against mine. My left hand finds your fingers again and my right hand wraps around your back until my palm comes to a rest on your hip.

“Fuck them,” you add after a small pause and then laugh so deliciously that I have to cover the corners of your mouth with mine to try and taste the joy that spills out of you. It’s scary thinking about a universe in which you and I don’t get moments like this every day.

“Yeah, fuck them,” I add in giggles.

They never saw us coming - never saw us happening like this, but it’s how we’ll always be. And that’s better than any other prescribed bullshit they’ll try to feed everyone else. Yeah, you might be a bit more sour than I am sweet, but it’s how I like you best - how I’ll always have you, and you’ll never have to worry about that changing.