The lesbians that lived in the apartment to the left of my grandmother’s were always described in whispers.         Caught in her teeth, her jokes: a pile of serpents         thrown at her neighbors for stealing her appetite                 —always hurried, always hushed, hissing her sissies                 & scissoring  as if the slurs would set them straight.                        It’s a complex: to return callous to the same snake                        den reminding you of your own head’s sibilance.                                I am of that ilk, I suppose: dreadful                                by happenstance, mere blinking having stopped                                       many a man in his tracks before me. Forbidden                                       to enjoy it, this calcified lineage.                                Like mighty Stheno & Sister Euryale, our family                                name insists wartime: those of us battling this curse                        of   loving men never cease to stop making rocks                        of   them, I, hating their waters, never able to skip any.                 They don’t make it that far. Somehow, always sinking,                 always cracking, always losing parts of  themselves.         Before my father’s cleaving to fracture, I eroded         his visage to ruin. I barely recognize him anymore, call him by his first name; in my head, shortening the suffix. The second time         I cried for a man, my heart became a stone         I’m not sure I can pass off for a body part.                 I don’t often mention it, but I need                 to speak on our history of numbness                        —the golems we bear to know what it is                        to bury a heart because someone abused it;                                                        how I’ve seen it: every sorrow a reflection                                I’ve avoided combing through, favoring the gleam                                        of  being shorn bald. I must be specific:                                        I have mirrored these monsters before, severed                                a personhood & expected it inconsequential.                                But snakes won’t stop coming out of  my face now.                         Their headless balm of displaced oil, preferring                         the word serpentine to wolfish, litters                 the sink with onyx scales graying as old money,                 losing count of hours lost losing count         of  bottles of  Nair, losing count of  quarters         lost promising men that they won’t bite. Unless unsettled, my mother bites, insisting my series of settling unsettles her. I am getting upset again,         steaming at how I am always seen         as the unintended coven member, learned                 in the ways the women folded their prayers                 as they did their napkins—tucked in the center                         of  a lap in the center of a man in the center of a table                         in the center of a lap in the center of a house                                 in the center of  a lapse in the center of a judgment                                 asking why I’m still sitting inside, my uncles ponder,                                         the weatherworn heir, moistened of caches of  secrets                                         of stoners & sisters of sinners in secrets in service                                 of  sexes insistent on serving their bullshit                                 —I’m sure they too would prefer me headless.                         It is frightening: I come from a stony people,                         my own uncle’s middle name meaning gem.                 My grandma was clever like that, slipped regal                 wishes into her children as if to imbue         them with crowns instead of  petrifying them.         We are skilled in this type of sorcery, tangling regret with dissatisfaction when sulking a sorry might not be enough.         But, it slinks off our lips anyway,         disdain’s silhouette appearing only in light                 of our gorgonry, this, our mother tongue,                 how we stilled our anguish, scarred our statues                         of psyches so, our countenances bled millennia                         before we ever turned to stone.                                 Hear them whisper what my secret is:                                 I have hardened for men many a day,                                         wantoned my waist round unwanted Perseans                                         just to see if  I could still do it again.                                 I wound. They whined. They slunk. They swung.                                 They spat. They struck. They slung that weak shit                         like they just knew they were hitting it right                         —their ego, its scissor, a sword-swallowing cut                 intent on making a trophy of me—I’m stunned.                 My God. They never remember the head.