Medusa’s Garden: A Vampire’s Lament
by Gina Marie Bernard
I picture you in a dream
(Or you fancy
that I’m watching you)
beautifully balanced
beneath the sliver
of a silver moon
as thin and sharp
as the edge of your nails.
Your fingers trail
through rings of hair:
recoiling, writhing
above the alabaster
pulse at your nape.
I place my palm
against the cool fabric
piled at your lower back.
We glide, you and I,
over cold marble
bodied with stone
ruins of desire.
Quarter notes,
black as pupils,
fall and scatter
across the floor
with a precision
born out of ¾ time.
A crescent shore
just beyond view
heralds the tautology
of a prescient sea,
but the slight pull
at the corner
of your lips reveals
you are unaware of these
repeated warnings.
My lips too feel
the familiar tug—
bared teeth bearing
terrible witness
to this unholy waltz.
You turn, dark matter
bound in your eyes,
and the rest is silent,
slate caesura.
_______________
Gina Marie Bernard writes from her home in Bemidji, Minnesota, where she is a high school English teacher. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Apeiron Review, Appalachia, Collective Fallout, The Fieldstone Review, Glitterwolf Magazine, Meat for Tea, Midway, Milk Sugar, The Otherwise, OVS, and pacificREVIEW. She is the author of two young adult novels, Alpha Summer and Vent.
