Cauldron Anthology Issue 3: Year 1 Collection Cauldron Anthology Year One Issue FINAL 1.17.18 | Page 50

Medusa and the Stone Man Amy Kotthaus You must be a man of stone; my flesh will not kneel to flesh, soft and dying. The fever scalding my lips consumes any skin kissed, burning it away to a heap of sinewless ribs. Piles upon piles, enough to build the horse on which I wait for a hard man to pull my hair like I ask without the strands dropping off and becoming black asps biting poison into a meaty calf. You must be an immovable man Compel me to pray, prostrate myself in divinely unfamiliar supplication. Press my searing lips to the cold marble of your feet, cleansed with rose water by dedicant priests. I crave the steeped petal taste of you. My ears ring with a sharp silence at the absence of a binding order, and my wrists sting with matching bands of blistered skin, missing the chill of silk red ribbons; they are the veins that bleed us into each other.