Medusa’s Echo
“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones” - Franz Kafka
You exist only when my gaze allows it
A shadow waiting for my soul to open
For my spirit to bloom like a lotus in the dark water.
Knowing I was never meant to be the sun.
As others have bloomed before me
And when I blink
You dissolve.
A ghost returning to it’s origin.
Our tears looked like glass upon the concrete
Brief constellations of regret. Proof that defeat has hands
That it can touch
That it can stain.
Nothing has breathed the same air since.
The night’s frost ripped up something buried deep within us
And I wished to exterminate it,
To unwrite the memory left abandoned in that city I will never return to.
Where sorrow wore our names and anguish was our only fire.
I wish your arms had never closed around me, that you never punched me with those chains disguised as comfort.
Now, with what I know
Your truth burns colder than any winter
I will not kneel to it
I will not make a shrine of my own mistakes.
Don’t whisper to me of the stone walls I have touched
Were they ruins of connection
Or prisons of deceit?
I am no Medusa
Although you tried to carve her into my reflection.
It is your gaze that petrifies
Your deeds that loom like serpents in the sun
And everyone can see them,
Lurking in the open light.
If you are familiar with the Medusa metaphor, if you are part of her: it is not your fault and you are never alone. ❤️