My first personal encounter with a muse was in high school, when, in the midst of a particularly frustrating romantic moment involving unrequited love and a slightly older woman, I wrote in pencil in a sketchbook the first 100 lines of an iambic pentameter argument with Erato, in which I rather vociferously quit writing love poetry.

I think in some ways I've been working for her ever since. The checks come from Calliope but it's becoming slowly clear that Erato's the one funding her.