Aphrodite

Aphrodite gets named once, in a quiet moment in Circe’s bed. Circe has just told Odysseus she is a goddess and is laughing at the irony, the daughter of Helios sent away and forgotten. Maybe if she had the power of Athena or Aphrodite, she says, the other gods would have noticed her. She does not mind. Their endless drama exhausts her. She prefers her wolves and owls. The line is small and lands hard. Aphrodite is shorthand for everything the divine world is supposed to be, beauty and entanglement and the tug of attention, and Circe is a goddess who decided long ago she would rather have animals and silence. Aphrodite herself never appears. She is a name dropped to mark a road Circe didn’t take.