Once, I thought life made more sense in the Greek mythology books I got from the library. People turned into spiders and trees, which was strange, but that seemed more natural to me than the way my parents slammed doors. So whenever I had an old question, I consulted an old god: "What's the point of me?" "Why does it hurt?" My grandma bought me a statue of Athena I placed on my lace doily, on my dressing table, and I consulted with her whenever I was scared.

That was often. But I never heard Athena's voice. I only ever had her words in poetry – Virgil and Homer. Eventually, I hoped that a pretty word and glossy caramel apple were enough to plug the hole I felt in my heart. 

I bit into red, green, and special Honeycrisp apples with sprinkles and white chocolate, but the hole only yawned and grew teeth. But I wonder, now, if there had actually been opportunities for me to turn into a black widow, or a willow, that I had been too self-absorbed at the time to notice. 

I'm thinking about this because I recently started playing Astral Shift's new Early Access game Hell Maiden, which reimagines the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri 14th century poem La Divina Commedia as a roguelike bullet hell. 

I'm finding Hell Maiden's interpretation of ancient poets as beautiful, flirty fairies to be both lovely and funny, though Homer, with her sleepy eyes and green hair twisting like ivy, especially inspires me. The blind singer has an unusually optimistic view on her being trapped in Limbo, the in-between afterlife for heretic poets, and she's reminded me of a few messages from a "wrong number" I've been holding onto for a long time.

Tell me, what do you think? I've added screenshots below.

I got these texts about a million years ago and never responded. I must have been 12 years old. I didn't react well to rhyme back then… or reason. 

Only Athena knows what I should have done.