Freya

They wrote you as love,
as beauty,
as something soft men could pray to
when they wanted something.

But they forgot
you were also war.

They forgot
you rode a chariot pulled by cats
like a woman who answered to no one,
like a woman who did not ask permission
to arrive.

Half the dead were yours.
Not the quiet dead.
Not the peaceful dead.
The warriors.
The ones who fought.
The ones who bled with their eyes open.
You did not choose the gentle souls.
You chose the brave and the broken.
You chose the ones who knew
that love and loss
are twins.

You were never just the goddess of love.
You were the goddess of wanting.
And wanting is dangerous.

You wanted pleasure.
You wanted gold.
You wanted magic.
You wanted a world that did not tell women
to stay small
and quiet
and grateful.

So you learned seidr,
old magic,
deep magic,
the kind of magic that lives in the body
and the blood
and the knowing.

They said it was shameful.
You did it anyway.

You wept for your lost love
and your tears fell as gold,
which is how I know
your grief was never weakness.
It was alchemy.

That is what they never understood about you.
You were not divided.
You were not one thing or the other.

You were love
and battle.
You were beauty
and hunger.
You were grief
and gold.
You were soft بدن and sharp blade.
You were the prayer
and the storm that answered it.

Freya,
teach me how to want
without apology.
Teach me how to be both
desired
and dangerous.
Teach me how to cry gold
and never call it weakness again.