Portrait Of Ruin Poem by Yasmin Hemmat

I am the temple
where my own ghost
kneels
like Medusa
before a mirror,
cursed to face herself
forever.

The bells toll
with fury
like shields of
Gods,
summoning
a congregation
of memories,
turned to stone
by my gaze.
Yet they breathe,
still,
inside their tombs.

My ribs are the vault.
My heart
a black candle
that hisses
like a serpent,
wax oozing
down
my hollowed lungs
like venom.

I dig graves
under my skin.
But the earth
spits me out.
Even the worms
will not look upon me
as if my curse
might turn them
to stone.

Night
my only witness
Shrouds me
beneath the
weight of silence,
then leaves me,
unfinished
a ruin.
A statue
weeping dust.

And when the dark
arrives,
I will unseal
my chest,
like the head
of the Gorgon's tomb,
and let it enter
coiling
through my veins,
like a serpent
until my heart
is stone,
and my body
a monument
to the monster
I have become.