Medusa

Reading the face in the palm of her hand 

She found another brown twisted strand 

Couldn't cut it off, so she shattered the mirror

Pretended she had destroyed the reflection

But then the image started following,

Out of the corner of her eye,

She whipped around her head to catch it off guard,

But she was the one caught, in the feather-light and buoyant, the tangled and derisive 

Layers upon layers of doctor’s gauze 

That eventually blocks out all light 

“There” doctor told her, “more manageable”

A hand full of curls, an unknotted string, 

A hopeful smile

She tried to smile back, 

Already feeling those shorn snakes rising up

Full of gleeful, anticipatory rage

Their sibilant rustling reminding her

To keep those thoughts inside

He tried to help, tried to cut them down to size

As if all that was wrong were those knotted words, 

A broken, silenced doll,

Untie and pull that string--she’ll talk again

Like all those other pretty porcelain women 

Didn’t think those words

Those sweet consonants and vowels tumbling out 

Of that pretty painted mouth

Could sting 

And those phrases could swell 

Until even "I love you" was unrecognizable 

Medusas mind is paradox, struggling in vain because 

Those snakes in the mirror have already

Turned that heart to stone

She still spends all morning,

Straightening those snakes in that shattered glass

All afternoon trying,

To untie those knots in that endless string

And by the evening those patient and persevering china doll fingers 

Are ground into a fine white powder,

Blunt, clumsy tools, resigned to struggle against a clock--

Those tamed curls twist back to life by night