medusa

Maybe there's a reason she's so hateful. Maybe there's a reason she's so hard. Poison in her, all through her; maybe it hurts. Maybe the hissing keeps her up at night. Maybe there's no magic. Maybe it's your own discomfort that turns you stone-still when you look into her eyes, her brutal and self conscious pain that stops you in your tracks.

Or maybe not.

Maybe she's just mean. Deep down, bone chilling, irrational, hates-your-guts-without-even-knowing-you mean. With a venom glare and an icy heart and her hair, even her hair! Restless snakes alive with silky voices, hateful songs. She could cut off all of their heads in a matter of moments (blood, then silence). But she won't. She's grown accustomed to their whispers, torturous but familiar. She's accepted the myth that they are a part of her, and she won't be parted from them now, not for anything, not ever.

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I have been struggling lately with my long held belief in giving people the benefit of the doubt. It would be so much easier if everybody was one thing or the other: bad or good. But we are, annoyingly, often both. Have you ever met Medusa? ARE you Medusa? What do you think?