Orpheus and Eurydice

The irregular trods of exhaustion, followed by certain ones of death. Chasing the mouth of the Styx. Trying to ignore the screams of a thousands hanging from the limbs of lamenting branches, whilst following a torch that still would not light. A journey of desperation. To make a pebble too heavy for Zeus to carry.

Eurydice, whose arm still leaks blood from the pin sized paths that dragged her to hell. Eurydice, whose breath did not come staggered. She did not flinch when daggers of rock found their way through her sandles. Stained with blood on their return. Eurydice’s eyes, two coins which have been flung into a glass pond. In their fervent, primordial need to watch and cling to Orpheus, they forget to blink.those eyes which raised tears like children. A feeble protest against the Chthonic ones. 

Orpheus, he who could not see the trail of blood indebted to the snake. Orpheus, who on his pilgrimage heard the anguish from Sisyphus, so pure in its form, that it ran thick as bile and rose from him.  It’s putrid stench mixing with the freezing flesh and boiling blood. Orpheus who had seen the Eagle stretch and snap Prometheus’s liver. Seen it’s ghost  be sucked down it’s pulsating throat. He saw this again and again, until it’s had been scored into his eyelids like a rune.

Orpheus, whose skin was pinned and pricked, as sand, finer than specks of glass darted through him, leaving behind a map of ruby red freckles. Orpheus, whose vision was a tapestry of what had been and what could be. Orpheus whose breath was thick with miasma and doubt. Orpheus who feared the gods.

Orpheus who turned. Eurydice, whose already wilting legs broke beneath her, as the ground  boiled all the remaining life  and hope from her. dreams that had been snatched by the omnipotent’s grasp. Orpheus, who dropped his lyre and ran. Eurydice whose feet had formed roots into the ground. Orpheus who, when at the end of time had finally been able to look at her, reach her, was flung back by Charon, just as his fingers grazed the bark of her skin.

Hades watched on. He witnessed a silhouette of arms beating against a chest is an animalistic display of grief as Orpheus was dragged up the path by the ferryman.

The other silhouette, Hades ruled over and understood. Although it did not have the energy to move, nor even echo the hatred it felt towards the Pantheon and its games. Yet, Hades still sensed the libations of love and loss that ran deeper than any realm Poseidon could swim to.

A figment of pity fluttered in Hades. As Orpheus’s wails, a far cry from his earlier song of divine, reverberated around the pits of inferno.