She woke up on the beach, covered in sand
the broken arm of a starfish clutched in her fist
as if in payment for an especially horrific deed.
She dropped the single, spiky limb as soon as she knew
what it was, watched it twist in the wake before rolling
back out to sea, perhaps to grow a whole new body
perhaps in search of its old one.
There are risks that come with having trysts with a god
both to the mother and the child. She knew this,
that she might be pregnant with a bear or a wolf
or a sad, lonely thing with snakes for hair, a child
predestined to die some horrible death:
ripped apart by Amazons, gored by a bull,
nailed to a cross.