THE GORGON AUNTIE, A Lost Story
She has a midget husband. They lived in a clone trailer. She notices things. Like, she thinks every person has a different color mouth, and her words come out accordingly.
She acts like she is bestowing highnesses and knighthoods as she shuffles to and from every silver shovel event, to fourth-rate art show, in her very pointy high heels, with her penciled on clown brows, her dusty white face powder over her skin five times darker, and her uneven lips, sometimes so chapped there is dried blood.
Some loathe to hear her hoof beats galloping down the hallway. Aside from her condescending and insincere and cruel comments, we have seen people nearly die of asphyxiation from her excessive face powder.
Yet…
though she is mean as spit.
We love her anyway.
She is our gorgon
She is our very own faulted
family dragon.
We feed her,
clean her
shelter her
as we have for years.
Why? Because we once saw at least two
fabulous flashes of her true
soul which is still completely
pure and loving and living
underground.
We consider her enchanted
by some whiskered, wicked fairy king.
It is we who have failed
thus far to find
the magic key
to break the spell,
but we have learned
to break her spell on us.
We are still searching for
the spell breaker for her.
We believe she is still
in there,
completely whole
and beautiful,
enfolded,
like a tender child
inside a new rose.
___________
CODA
“Gorgons sometimes are depicted as having wings of gold, brazen claws, the tusks of boars, but most often with the fangs and skin of a serpent.”