Aspecta Medusa, or Why I Let Him, by Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose

Aspecta Medusa, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (England) 1867

Aspecta Medusa, or Why I Let Him  
 
To lose your head over a boy 
 
to want him so badly you’d offer 
anything. I mean throat. I mean tongue. What 
 
I mean is, even Spring can be talked  
into flowering too early. 
 
Of course, I’d heard the stories about him. 
My sisters had been around, were familiar. 
They exchanged knowing glances as they 
hummed their dirge, each of us jockeying 
for the mirror before school. Mama used to call it 
putting on our faces. The cupid lips. The apple 
cheeks. All us girls trying to get it  
just right. The look. 
 
To be the fruit. 
To be the one he’d pick. 
 
On our first date, strolling home  
from the movies, night perfumed  
with pear and fig and his arm locked  
around my neck, he joked about  
a threesome with the redhead slinging  
popcorn. From between the blades  
of sweet grass, crickets fluted a warning.  
I punched him in the arm, lightly. Laughed  
as girls will. Lightly. He hung 
his jacket around my shoulders 
But next time I kept my eye on her. 
 
What I want to say is: after the first time 
I could have left him except he started crying  
about his dead-beat dad, about shouldering the world’s  
weight. I think he wanted to love me.   
When he placed my hand over the grief  
blazing in his chest I could practically  
see through him. How many girls  
get to heal 
a God? 
 
A good head on her shoulders, 
that’s what they used to say about me. 
As if being sensible can protect a girl. 
As if a foolish girl deserves less blame. 
 
The night he ended things, 
I was asleep, dreaming of my sisters  
in our mother’s kitchen, the three 
of us gathered at her skirts. She was  
singing, rolling out sugared dough, 
our stomachs cramping with desire. 
When she looked away, I snuck  
just a morsel, its sweetness still melting  
my tongue when I opened my eyes  
 
and saw his sword drawn, tears 
polishing his hero’s jaw. 
I pulled aside my collar, 
turned my head into the pillow. 
 
Made it easier for him.

Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose

Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose's work appears in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Mom Egg Review, Emrys, Women Studies Quarterly, Feminist Formations, and Room, among others. She is the author of two chapbooks: Wild Things, (Main Street Rag, 2021) and Imago, Dei (Rattle Chapbook Poetry Prize, 2022). A community college professor and co-founder of the Rochester-based writing group Straw Mat Writers, she lives in Rochester, NY, with her partner, two daughters, and four rescue animals.

Aspecta Medusa, by Simeon Solomon (England) 1894