My Wife, the Gorgon.
No one talks about it, but my wife is the last
of the chthonic female sisters, born to replace Medusa
after Perseus cut her snake infested head off.
And no one wants to mention it, but something went wrong
during the pregnancy. She was born with a horrible deformity
that I can tell you just appalled poor Phorcys and Ceto.
To discover their daughter’s hair snakeless and mortal
while her legs slithered about like a couple of reticulated pythons
was almost too much to bear. They asked me when I married her
what I thought of her condition. Why I haven’t run. But I said that
I didn’t mind her little cold-blooded toes sidewinding in the sheets,
looking for crevices and pockets of heat. That I would love
her just the same though she stuff her glacier calves
in nooks and crannies they were never intended to go.
That it’s too cute when I try to refuse and my sweet Gorgon
girl threatens to turn me into stone. Her fist raised in fury,
screams and sirens that I should understand what marriage is,
that it’s more giving than not; that this is what love is,
no matter what I say.
That this is how the story goes,
mythology be damned,
history be written.
