The Three Deaths of Eurydice

Note: For a better reading experience, it is suggested to first read a brief summary online about the mythical story of Orpheus and Eurydice.

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is most famously recognized in Virgil’s Georgics, Book IV (4)

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Orpheus-Greek-mythology 

*Update: Chiara Di Lorenzo-Graham has recently been the recipient of two Silver Keys, one Honourable mention, and one Gold Key from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. The following poem was awarded a Silver Key.

The Three Deaths of Eurydice

One

I am reminded of certain war stories.

Ones of soldiers who were ambushed

as they travelled in the forest,

stripped of their belongings and

hung upside down by their feet.

The rope was cruel,

it burned and bruised and bit where it met their skin,

it hung them as bait for whichever

creature desired a snack.

My restraints were not the same.

If any myth is true,

let it be that the snake is the symbol of the Devil.

It found me in bliss, and to keep me to the ground

it pinned my feet with silver nails dipped in fear.

If the rope was Cerberus’ toy,

the snake was the Devil’s friend.

With a bite to my leg,

my lifeline is shot down like an animal,

bare and skinned and bound to unearthly fire.

It sank me too deep in the Earth, too far below anything alive that my nerves met a pair of hands that tugged at my ankles, grabbing me for dear life so that we would not capsize, bringing me down so I could grow in whatever realm of death it wandered.

Two

If the Earth had a palette of the darkest colours to paint its night sky,

the Underworld spun on an entirely different colour wheel.

But the darkness of this place could not evoke fear in me.

In fact, if it wishes for me to scream,

it would have to hold my mouth open

as it lodged fear down my throat.

Scream after scream, until my own words

are jumbled with alien sound,

and I am lost in high-pitched mania.

I rode on Charon’s boat in silence,

and breathed the fumes of the pomegranate trees.

They are grown under the dominant moon,

their leaves turn silver from its longing gazes.

I ask it why it loves this world so dearly,

and in answer it grows me under its shine,

and lets me pick from its trees.

My mouth turns into a waning crescent.

Three

I know that when I fell to the ground on the last day of my life,

Orpheus played a mournful tune,

and the tears of the forest and its creatures around him,

sunk the trees into swamp.

I know that if I dared touch one of these canine tears,

it would burn me so violently,

that I might somehow die a second time.

They were not for me, I have no death to call my own.

Forest tears repel away from me as if my skin is sour,

even if it was my body that lay in the field that day.

One condition, that's all Hades spoke,

and as I followed Orpheus away from this kind darkness,

I wished I could bathe in a bathtub of those forest tears, clean myself of this misery, strip the layer of skin away that is not my own.

Grown by me, grown for me, but it does not serve me.

Each step was torturous,

I could feel the fates pulling me back, strings of yarn weaving around my figure.

I have a fated destiny with no loom, nothing to weave it, nothing to spin it wild.

But still, I walked behind him, and as we approached the sun-speckled hills

I could feel life’s smile on my face.

It was a cruel one, with bared teeth and rotten kindness,

it pointed to where Pluto sat in the sky,

as if it wished to say, trespasser.

When Orpheus turned,

just steps before I could return to the land of the living,

I could see the claws of impatience scratching up his shoulders,

leaving their marks in manic scribbles,

and I died once again.

The snake’s bite was incomparable

to how the faithful flies swarmed me in Orpheus’ gaze.

So the two siblings, life and death, played cards

over the fate of a woman damned by Aphrodite,

and life folded immediately.

I met the boat once more, and through the darkness

I could make out a name on the hull I did not see before,

Charon’s boat is named Orpheus.

Eurydice, you are a tragedy, and I am sorry.