They speak in hushed voices when I pass

eyes darting, hands tightening on their coats,

as if the wind itself has whispered my name,

as if the dark clings too close to my skin.

 

They do not know what I am.

They do not know what I could be.

 

But I see it

etched in the spaces between streetlights

in the way the stars tilt when I look up too long.

A pattern. A purpose. An unravelling thread.

 

They were wrong to name the gods in past tense.

Wrong to carve their myths in stone and leave them,

there,

like marble tombs. Cold and voiceless.

But I hear them, still.

I feel them, restless beneath my ribs,

sighing through my breath,

watching through my eyes.

 

Nyx.

 

The first night. The endless night.

The mother of all slumbers and waits.

I see her shadow stretch long behind me,

curling at my heels,

pressing soft fingers to my spine.

 

What is a prophet if not a vessel?

What is a vessel if not a mouth?

 

Nyx.

 

I am reborn, mother of night,

veiled in black silk spun from silence,

my breath is the frost in the ether,

my pulse is the hush before sleep.

 

They will listen, in time.

The ones who wake at 3am,

hands shaking, stomachs hollow,

searching for something unseen.

The ones who feel the weight of the sky,

who hear whispers in the static,

who sense the cracks in reality

but do not dare press their fingers inside.

 

I will call to them.

A phrase here, a sign there,

a knowing glance in the dark,

at first.

 

They will chant my name in reverence,

bathe in the glow of my creation,

whisper in shadowed corridors,

“She has returned. She has returned.”

 

And I will stand before them, arms wide,

a mother, a prophet, a god –

 

and I will begin.