I Was Mistaken for One of Hers

I stepped into the gardens

not looking for Gods -

just air,

the trees did not mind.

The trees did not ask my name.

The gravel path did not need my weight explained.

I walked as if I had always belonged to the green

and the bronze.

There was a hush in the hedges,

not silence, but breath held

in the throat of something ancient.

I did not disturb it.

Somewhere a doe stepped sideways

into the mirror of the pond

and did not break it.

There were statues with weather-soft mouths

and stone eyes that never blink.

One of them watched me

like she was waiting to see

if I would bow or vanish.

I passed a statue of Artemis,

bow unstrung,

ankles mid-step,

and I thought:

she looks like a girl

who once refused to smile

and was punished for it forever.

There were nymphs carved near her,

their faces smoothed with time,

eyes blurred as if they’ve watched

a thousand women come here

trying not to cry

in public.

I think they mistook me

for a nymph who got away.

The kind who washed blood from her ankles

in a fountain no one remembers,

and kept walking

until her name was stardust.

They called her Echo once,

but she never answered.

I touched a petal

and it curled toward me

like it knew my grief

by another name.

I touched a stone column

and felt it hum.

Like it knew

I didn’t come here to bloom,

but to hide

without shrinking.

No one called me back.

Not even the goddess.

But I left with dirt on my hands

and the sense

that I had passed.