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Releasing the Kraken 87 Medusa and Neptune Susan Varnot She was very lovely once, the hope of many An envious suitor, and of all her beauties Her hair most beautiful— —Humphries’ Ovid The men are a diary of my days with stone: one posed climbing from his boat, one crouched against a boulder’s shadow, one hoisting blade. My sisters take turns looking at what I’ve done, passing their one eye like a child between them. Father, I have trouble sleeping. Sometimes it’s the seaweed shifting along the shore or the vipers in my hair—they glide and pull from the roots without healing; some nights I walk the island like a sentry or like a woman again gleaning shapes in the waves, searching the water for scaled hips riding the crests. All night, I hear flight, wings rustling like a boat scraping sand. Before my exile, I was down by the sea searching for anemones and picking the chamomile that knots the path to the shore. I selected gaping sea roses, bundling them to take to Minerva’s shrine. The light on the water was enormous. I was praying. I smarted with the sea so near; I smelled the acrid salt and scales, as fingers webbed against my neck. Something wet pushed me down. My lip caught 88 A Face to Meet the Faces the edge of the altar and I tasted the tin of blood. I washed beneath one wave and another. I stared into that darkness, stammering into its emptiness, its piteous lack of form; I gave to it my body, my head turned towards a fracture in the wall. I could not identify him if you were to bring him before me, but I would know the touch of a god wet and dark that flew straight through me as though I were water or air broken into. The flowers I had gathered scraped my wrists. I could do nothing but look and keep on looking at the wall, emptying myself of light. A flicker of fire, metal sparked against stone. When he was gone, I tried to fold the blossoms back onto their stems. Father, your daughter who once drew an alabaster comb through hair with the ease of sunlight slipping through trees now listens to hissing that walks where she walks. Do you know what it’s like to stare at the stone effigies of men who have come to slay you. When I bathe, my sisters keep watch. I fear I will live this sea forever. Father, I remember the pears ripening beside the garden wall, the scent of thyme and rosemary blurring, but it grows tiring, and how I would mourn, for perhaps history or gods. I am no longer even myself but what once was a girl, back turned to the sea. ...

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