Offa

From Universe to Goddess

Offa eats flowers. She cups her hands into scoops and threshes through the dandelions, reaping petals, grass, and stems—then shoves them into her mouth.

 

We don’t see Offa as she sees herself. Most see an idiot-child stricken with a tragicomic compulsion to devour lilies, forsythia, primrose—this perception is solidified by those who have witnessed Offa’s binges when, like a grass-eating cat, she heaves forth a sickening pulp, a rancid pellet flecked with shocks of undigested color.

Oh, maybe she's a benevolently-mugged demigoddess, a traipsing dryad with specters attending her bridal train. Perchance my m’lady (my mossy lady) leaves a trail of blooms in her wake—another allusion to a wedding ceremony, a clever inversion of the petal-strewing flower girl. This Gaia-Bridezilla is self-sufficient, spontaneously generative, and stylishly modest in her tendril-whipping cloak-slash-frock. And she has glowing toes: glowtoes. In fact, the entire undersides of her feet hum with phosphorescent light. Bioluminescent-foot-fetishism is a possibility now.

Oh no, “Oh”, abovementioned “Oh” – Offa is a failure-girl. A vomiting retard. A meadow-slut. A weed-wastrel. A Cabbage Patch Kid gone to seed. A foundling pumpkin kicked in the gourd.

And how they would join hands and, spinning, sing:

Oh! Awful Offa

Awful is Offa

Offering offal to the officials

Off with you, Offa

Awful is Offa

Off to the Elysian Fields

They felt the lilt of the lyrics in their bones. Incensed and encircled, Offa would rake her teeth across the earth and rage.