A Beautiful Night
The fire had fallen low; the three sisters lay awake,
while moonlight crossed the floor in pieces.
Stheno laughed, “Tomorrow, we shall leave this place,”
and Euryale smiled, “Tomorrow, we shall see.”
Medusa said nothing, staring into the dark,
remembering days when men looked at her without fear—
when beauty was a blessing, not a thing to guard,
and her own reflection did not feel like a wound.
“I remember the sea,” she whispered, “before all this,
how freely we would run beside it at dusk.
You two were always faster than me,
and I was always the one you waited for.”
“We still wait,” Euryale said. “We always will.”
Medusa smiled, but the smile carried years:
the temple, the silence, the shame that wasn't hers,
and the gods who had made her pay for another's sin.
She had learned to hide her face from the world,
to sleep with grief and wake with rage,
to hear footsteps and wonder what they wanted,
to mistake every kindness for another trap.
Yet tonight, her sisters spoke of distant places—
of mountains untouched, of a house by the sea,
of mornings where no one knew their names,
where they might grow old without being hunted.
“Perhaps,” Medusa said, “I could live there.”
Stheno turned toward her. “You will.”
No prophecy entered that room,
no god announced what dawn had planned.
Three sisters, three shadows, one fading flame.
They spoke until their voices became whispers,
until hope, exhausted, became almost a prayer.
Medusa closed her eyes and held her sisters' hands.
“Stay,” she murmured, “until I fall asleep.”
“We are here,” they answered.
And beneath the indifferent moon,
Medusa dreamed of a tomorrow she would never see.
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