Gold dances in the memory of green eyes. 
Coils of fire flare in the dark of Erebus. 
She could cry
...if she still had a body. 

Making her way with burning shades, 
she tries not to ponder 
that killers prey twice: 
the initiation of attack, and the peak 
when nervous souls abandon bloody bodies. 

Everyone here had some sort of predator; 
even the old, decomposed ones 
were once murdered by Time. 

Elysium on the horizon glows with a pseudo-sun 
not for her, cursed by a goddess to suffer for eternity. 
Yet three dogs approach before a lantern, 
night-defiant and quicker than Cerberus. 
Their tails surround, drawing a circle with their bodies 
to protect and welcome, embrace the gorgon 
and pull in the day-bringer of hades.  

Webs drape delicately across this goddess’s cloak.  
Kindness radiates from a face at once youthful and aging.  
“Gorgon-by-curse, feel welcome here,” she croaks yet sings.  
Snakes weave around her left ankle and twist up her leg.  

“I am Hekate, guardian 
of falsely maligned creatures 
named Monster in life. Join me; embers wait 
with an eternal glow to ward off despair.  
Arachne has wanted to speak with you for some time.” 

Eventually, Medusa thinks as she considers whether  
reality will punish her superficial desire to observe  
her ghostly reflection clear of mortal affliction.  
“Here,” the goddess responds.  

Svelte fingers reach for Medusa’s arms  
before she sees the shadow of a dark face  
once so full of life. Below black eyes, an echo.  
Tulips that hosted clever boasts seem to quiver still  
to embrace the twin flame she never met alive.  

“Medusa.” The voice dances around the slither,  
a memory of the spider she used to be.  
“Green is the color of Olympus’s base.  
How dare it creep and climb the slope  
to touch the temple of the gods?  
How dare mortal moss blush the cheeks  
of motherless Sky Woman? She pushed  
marsh costumes on us  
to be rid of a colored complexion.  
An embodied Mind cannot be victim  
to fleshy dress. So she has always thought.  

Mercy, she claimed, after I took charge of my first death.   
Truth: she did not want the better weaver   
rewarded   
with reunion in Elysium.   
Instead, the resurrected spider had to hide in the grass   
lest my family flatten  
what once were my proud ribs.   
Then they did,  
they crushed my conceited heart deep into fertile soil  
that suffocated the vine of my eight eyes  
as food for the life it rose for harvest.”  

Despite lacking a living form, Medusa imagines  
she feels the embers blaze to score her cheeks.     
She gets me...  

“Arachne, my green scales were closer to your crawling form  
than the human bodies we once inhabited.  
The sun our only warmth once Athene sliced off our breasts  
to make clean altar cloths from purified blasphemer’s meat.  
You’d think a feminine spirit would understand  
man is the aggressor, but truthfully, she is only Zeus  
with breasts our brothers could lust over,  
ignoring Poseidon’s own crimes.  

What do I care about blasphemy now?  
My curse made me the immortal villain.  

You'd heard my tale before your own began,  
yet long dead were you when Perseus arrived  
with his decapitating sword and her mirror smarts.  

I was already damned.  
At least here I have company.  
We tempted the gods — Elysium was never meant for us.”  

“No,” Hekate interjects, “but you do not deserve Hades’ wrath  
on Athene’s orders. You will join me at the crossroads.  
Like my dogs, we shall number three.”  

“To what end?”  

“Extant flesh I clasp becomes me.  
I shall elevate you as much as is in my power.  
Minor goddesses, superior shades  
that shall guide fallen women whose only crime  
was trusting their own strength against a man’s claim.  
Now, a gift, as a balm to your lives.  
See your born faces again.”  

Hekate summons a floating gilded mirror  
and Medusa tightens her eyelids,  
afraid of the curse’s years thrown back upon her.  
Arachne cups Medusa’s face in her palm and says,  
“Such a beauty the gods could not resist.”  

Medusa opens her eyes to juniper flecks floating  
on a bed of sage and seaweed.  
Smooth skin the color of soaked sand,  
with shell fragment freckles  
dusting her full nose — no longer snakelike slits.  
A crooked umber smile, like a seahorse  
touched by the sun’s rippling underwater rays.  
The perfect imperfections she remembers,  
resulting from a mammal’s gestation.  
No hint of the scorpion  
hatched from a cold egg  
exposed too long in the desert night.  

“Only when we touch can we regain   
a hint of our former skin.  
When I let go, a shade again   
you will be,” Arachne whispers.  
Medusa stares hard and long into the mirror,  
admiring the play of color their skins perform,  
the tan of her sand dancing delicately against Arachne’s midnight sky.  

“Never let go,” Medusa says so softly she barely speaks.  
Arachne hears the words through vibration of breath alone:  
another holdover from her animal time.  
Her tulips bloom.  

No man, no sun, could ever be as potent  
as the light she feels underground in hades  
with the lover she never met  
and whose cheek she kisses gently  
for the first time in death.