Medusa

The snakes moved before the face did. Medusa turned, living hair, a gaze that made the air feel like stone. No one finished the sentence they had started. The garden of figures was already quiet. People who looked away in time carried a medusa gift in the neck, the ache of not looking back. It returns in medusa playing cards no one wants to meet eye to eye, in a medusa notebook left open and then shut, in a medusa postcard of the snakes and the still mouth. The stone keeps its stare. The hair does not settle.