To Orpheus

'everything dies twice. Once in your hands, and once on your heels."

Everything must die twice.
Once in your hands,
once on your heels. 

I found your head downstream, 
severed at the root, lyre caught on a branch.
In your last breath, Orpheus,
you said to me: 
“To love is to mourn. 
You’re going to be chased by echoes 
for the rest of your life.”

And you were right.
The shattered remains 
cling to me 
like shards of glass 
in skin.  
Outlines mark his absence. 
Dents in bedsheets, 
mug rings on wood; 
they stick to the margins of me,
creeping into my periphery.

It all salts the wound, 
and I press my fingers into my flesh. 
Reliving the agony that marked the end
to feel something close to the rush
that sparked the beginning. 

But everything must die twice, 
and I’ve held onto this grief since I gained it. 
Every now and then, I beat that same path
down the staircase. 
Past muscle, past bone, 
to the grim realm that holds 
the shadows of my love. 
I sift through the grey souls
till I find the familiar face. 

I wrench him up the staircase, 
and I climb, and climb, and climb.
I swear I won’t look back, 
that I’ll evict him, lift the sentence, 
set him free. 

I climb, and climb, and climb. 
So close to the light, so far from being whole.
I put one leg across the threshold, 
and like every lover and every mourner, 
my foot catches on fate.
And just like you, 
I turn, and turn, and I turn.

---

pt.2 of my poetry series! lucky last is Achilles! 🏹🔥