She was the arms he took up
when the viper robbed his lyre of its muse

She was the devotion he carried underground to bring her home again

She was the mourning sonata that caused Hades to weep

She was the echos of longing that made him turn back

She was the immortal whisper in the dark of his guilt
That said
Orpheus
Don't forget about us

The ground beneath her

feet has taken her, the earth --


whose praises I sang.

Just like Orpheus,
I descended.
Though,
my digression was
for different
reasons.
Yeah, I tried to
rescue you from
your hell.
Bring you out of
the degradation,
the debauchery.

It smelled like
***** and ****.
The swine squealed.
The harpies shrieked.
And,
I looked
too long.
I became you.

Thank God I escaped.
Fate dragged me
out by the scruff
of my neck.
I will never
visit your
underworld
again.
You've made it
your home.

i always fancied myself a eurydice
the perfect victim in a perfect tragedy

but you have me feeling like orpheus
and i can't stop wondering if i would have looked back

and i know i would have if you asked me to

i don't believe in soulmates,
but i think we came close.
skin to skin, i read your palm,
but how was i supposed to know?

what do you do when your red string
gets caught in the door?
i never could untangle it,
and i didn't know how to be loved by you anymore.

i ask constellations how you're doing
and dodge your calls.
in the summer, you'll trace my palms
and we'll defy stars as trivial.

there's always something about good things i want to ruin.
there's no version where orpheus doesn't turn around.
it's not so much precognizance but
digging up the same old burial ground.

it's not so much what you read
in between freckles and lines, but the sense
of connection, a familiarity of skin on skin
and a practiced willingness to drop the pretense.

what a wicked thing i was.
i turned back, anyway.

the devil i dealt with 
wasn’t a devil at all,
it called itself her fate,
took my place by her side
and told her it was time to go, 
everyone was waiting 
down below,

the devil she dealt with 
wasn’t a devil at all, 
i called myself her lover, 
and she loved me in kind, 
and when she’d gone
i couldn’t understand
why she’d leave me behind,

if nothing else
i had to see her
one last time,

the devil we dealt with 
wasn’t a devil at all,
it called itself inevitable
yet decided to let us go,
said it would see us again
one day, together 
down below,

i didn’t think to ask her
what she wanted,
if the hands of fate
were warmer than my own. 
if i had kept on looking forward, 
maybe i would know.

what a wicked thing i was. 
i turned back, anyway. 

                                                       ­                                       "was she upset?"

i couldn’t say. 
she smiled the whole time,
and when she disappeared
it was all she left behind.

i am Orpheus in the clouds
playing clown for the masses.

i'm half of the shaft of light
breaking mosaically into
millions of pieces across the kitchen floor.

i'm a smoky chandelier swaying with
the bravado of a censure on high-holy-day.

i'm the royal velvet lining your blood.

i am a poem, without reason, read to you
by a stranger.

i am 200 tons of cracked granite one thousand
feet above you splitting off from the face of
the mountain.

but more so than any of that,

i'm a peculiar kind
of nothing

typing words onto
screens before
i die.