Gorgon
I am beautiful.
Face: delicate, ephemeral.
Lips: tender.
Cheeks: rosy with life.
My eyes are warmth and promise.
I have lured men and women to their ends,
little deaths and big deaths in my arms.
I have loved so strongly, so deeply,
I have pulled them to me with my love, and
I have loved them all, every one of them.
I loved them all.
I love them still, the collection of them
that surrounds me, silent,
and I think they love me too,
in their cold eternal way.
I hope they love me too,
all frozen in their moment of ecstacy,
all frozen in their final gasps and sighs,
before their lungs seized and captured that air,
before their hearts hardened,
before I cast them, eternally in stone
before I met their eyes with mine
and their yielding tender skin stiffened.
and now they stand around me, an orchestra
of silent moans and cries of joy,
a thousand pairs of eyes screwed tight or flown open wide,
a thousand parted mouths,
a thousand heaving breasts.
They are beautiful, and they will never tell
that
I am beautiful, too.