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Midas and Medusa

Our suffering was human long before you Tried to “humanise” it, Give us the kiss of life, I am not your wife, I am not your sister I am not your fucking daughter, sorry to break All this water On the embers of you Deigning, for once, to give a damn What your friends do to us By imagining we belong To you — I will demonstrate How little you know of possession As I run My keys along your car Til your mouth unlocks, drops open And I dive down your throat, walk around In you, the cage Of your ribs more spacious than My own, two sizes too small, Zero, counting down to take-off, space For my heart all taken With the frenzied tango Of me watching you watching me, behind My eyes, all winged And no less trapped for it Vandalism is not violence I would have snapped Your wrist when you tried to kiss me Just to see if you’d curse quietly About your shattered iPhone bones Pick up, dust off, shrug shoulders, Cold and solar, Your belongings increasingly disposable So when you love me because I could be yours Don’t flinch when I spit In your eye, scream, cry, take Your name in vain To leech from myself the pain of your basilisk glance Turning me into rubble, eroding all The toil and trouble or whatever it is You fear in me, petrified Perfect specimen, cut and dried Venus de Milo on a pedestal Armless, harmless All legs and bust Soft hewn and lunar, gathering dust I am not your Medusa Victim, your rock, your dirty girl Grain of sand to make a pearl I am fire, water, air You cannot hold me Don’t stroke my hair, don’t fucking touch Me, yeah, my fingertips May turn you to gold But I’m not here to spin your straw Neither am I some unrefined ore For you to forge into a wedding ring Stone is bitter cold as metal Though it makes a rougher crown Don’t worry, though, my darling, The chill will hiss and dissipate When I come to melt You down



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