Together in one body,
fused and melted together
like alchemical gold;
A hybrid of a type of love
that never got to happen
& will now never tarnish,
be broken or melted back down
into coal and then pressed on
until diamonds bloom.

Orion, Son of a Gorgon
did not have snakes for hair
or brass knuckles
but he stood still as common stones
when he first saw the girl in the woods.
Artemis shot him. Orion:
the only man she could ever love.
Without flinching, she picked up her arrows
and went deeper into the woods
with nothing on her finger
but the diamonds of the night.

[Evelyn Deshane has appeared in Plenitude Magazine, Strange Horizons, The Rusty Toque, and Lackington’s. Their chapbook, Mythology, was released in 2015 with The Steel Chisel. Evelyn (pron. Eve-a-lyn) received an MA from Trent University and currently studying for PhD at Waterloo University. Visit them at: evedeshane.wordpress.com]