No one tells you how quiet it gets
after they make you the monster.
They made a fable out of me:
a girl with too much hair,
a laugh that startled birds.
Beauty, they said, is a type of violence.
I was undone by gods with fickle hungers.
This windswept temple once abuzz with prayers
stands still. All the waves have turned away,
a polished shield bears no reflection,
no one to notice what was taken.
Let them think I wanted this:
stoic loneliness of petrification.
Some nights I dream of solid roots
instead of snakes, stone crumbling
simply into smaller stone.
A man comes to me with kind eyes,
but I know better.
Men turn monumental at the sight of me.
Even blades need hands to wield them.
I dream my mother braids my hair,
curls snaked soft around her fingers.
She bent to fear when I have never
turned another woman.
Now the serpents stir, the swaying hiss
of wheat awaiting harvest.
I am the hunger that feeds the teeth.
I am hissing wreath,
I weaponize my face against
heroes and their gleaming swords.
Somewhere, a woman will dream of snakes,
feeling slithering she doesn't understand.
I made this world.
I made myself a warning,
gleaming hard in the sun, saying,
“This is what they do to us.
This is what we become.”
Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash
