Eurydice

In the end, They pinned the stars to his dark suit, in the shape of his lyre.

And so, goodbye. I am in immense darkness holding out my hands which are, alas, no longer his. One points up, the other down and here I am, forever, waiting. My body is a signpost and my veins make many dead roads. My heart is a folly; outside, beautiful but inside it’s door-less and it holds no heat. I mark the way, here; where he left me, were they kept me, as a warning.

To love is to hurt.

Above, there’s a long white road and it leads up to the sun. We dream of that road and, in our sleep, we walk it. We walk backwards with our eyes tightly closed, against the wind, counting steps. That way, if we ever make it back, we’ll know when to stop walking and be at peace. Even in our sleep, we know the truth; we mustn’t look back. We almost always do, though. It’s human nature to want things most when they’re almost gone. We must do everything in our power, everything we can, not to look back.

But we do it, anyway. We look back and we wake up.

Up or down, though. That is the choice that we always have.

Up then. Up there.

He looked back. That much I understand. He didn’t take them at their word but he was right to. They pulled me back so fast that I left a cloud of dust behind, my post deserted, the road unmarked. Carrying grey dust in my hair, I couldn’t hear him…my singer, and I couldn’t hear. The rushing noise rose and deafened me, but I saw him, and I bloomed life. I couldn’t read his lips but I tried. I would have held my hands out to him but my hands had forgotten any purpose which they had before. When they let me go, I followed him automatically; close my eyes and followed his smell and counted the steps. Don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t look back.

He did, of course.

It’s human nature. We always look back.

The road to Elysium was long and pale. I took it slowly in my bare feet, the dust stirring upwards and into my open hands, all that I had to bring with me. Somewhere something was burning and the smoke was pressing against our sky. One, two, three backwards steps and the city came back into view…a a palace tightly walled, a prison, a present. Hades built it for his stolen Queen…

In the courtyard, three old men sat nodding. Their miscarriages of justice were legendary. Back before them in my raggy wedding gown, faded scarlet, I waited.

“Take the high road.” I took it, backwards and forwards, down and up.

One of them was blowing smoke rings. I tried to catch one, one handed, thought that I might wear it on my cold hand. They were looking at me, leering. I imagined him there with me, and I opened my eyes, repeating one number, over and over, and I was not afraid.

“Tartarus is for whores, murderous mothers, inconstant wives. Elysium waits for heroes.” What did I know about heroes? What had I ever done that was brave? Now I was learning, but too late to change anything at all. I was learning to be brave.

“Such is life, woman. Your tragedy is to burn, if briefly.” I don’t think that those old men had any idea of just how viciously I could burn, just then. My heart was solid stone, like a comet. I could burn with a blue fire and not be consumed. That was what I had left to me. To burn and burn and never eat myself alive.

I got a last glimpse of the palace as I walked away, pale, perfect in it’s symmetry, and it broke my heart. Nothing grew in her garden but the marble was worked with buds always on the edge of bloom. Persephone was waiting for her Spring, always.

I was so thirsty. The numbers stuck in my mouth, against my teeth and repeated. There are two pools beside the gates. Up to my ankles, I stopped but I did not drink. I stood there with the hem of my dress floating and I watched the heartbroken women scrabbling on their hands and knees for mouths full of water. They say that Lethe takes away pain. It’s always that way with women; shared grief, but hidden. I needed my pain to keep my shape, needed the number of steps, the memory of the light. I needed them so that I would know when to stop. I twisted my hair, dropped my flowers and my dancing shoes on the surface of the water and watched them sink. I was so thirsty and so, so cold. That’s all that the dead are. We are cold from the inside out.

In Aspodel, I saw a boy newly arrived in hell. His body clung to the shadow of his armour. A Spartan, maybe, although he could have been from Carthage or Mogadishu or Amiens, too. He wore his hair shaved close against his skull. I asked his name…he couldn’t remember. I asked him where he’d come from. A field. There had been red flowers growing. How had he died? He hadn’t. He was just dreaming of this chilly girl in this chilly hell. Sometime soon, he’d wake. He touched me with both hands and stained my dress red over my heart. And how dare they talk to me about heroes, when I went walking in dim Aspodel and saw the faces of the million dead boys.

There was a clamouring noise, a jazz chatter across the whole of hell. The red hand print bled across my heart and I was going up, up, up.

In my dreams, the dog barks and snarls, warns that I am escaping. I was expecting that, but all that he did was lift his great heads to watch me pass. He knew who I was and barely made a snarl. My body left no warms shapes in the air. There was no mistaking me for anything other than I was.

The banks of the Styx are thick with mud and I left deep, backwards footprints there. On the opposite shore, the shuddering masses pushed and pulled. I had no money to pay the toll but I did have some silver; the ring that he gave me would have melted down into two rough coins.

“Take the oar,” Charon said. If he can find someone to take the oar then he can finally walk away, but nobody was ever that stupid. I folded my arms across my chest and I watched the shore slip away. He talked, but I didn’t hear…I drew my rusty veils around me and I watched and I waited. I don’t think he’ll ever find anyone to take that oar. It’s his hell and nobody else’s.

You don’t have to stay anywhere forever. You don’t have to do anything forever.

I know that it’s an abstract, but the cold. The cold creeps in and freezes you, hardens your cracked and bleeding heart. Beyond flesh and blood by then, I was beginning to thaw. Blinded and shivering, feeling the cold, I felt my way through a forest wooded with suicides. Lips moved against the palms of my hands. Whispers came to me through my pores. (What is the word for a mother of dead children? Why does love begin? Why does it end? Is there such a thing as too much love? Can you die of too little? How many people have died that way? How far would you go? When would you stop? Why does blood taste of metal? How many dreams can you explain away? How many days? Where does the good go, when it goes (and it does)?). He might have gotten a song out of it, my singer, but they would have devoured him as payment for their secrets. They would have eaten his warm heart whole. I didn’t belong there. It wasn’t my fault. I just wanted to be happy. I just ran out of luck.

I wrapped my fingers around the fibres of their prayers and pulled myself on up.

The world fades out at the edges, becomes all kinds of grey. It’s difficult to tell which direction to walk in, which way is up, but we have dreamed of this road and with your eyes closed it all looks the same anyway. One step after the other, one foot behind the other and, eventually, the light.

Sometimes, we even think that we see the sun and the unbroken blue of the sky.

And I grew up there, no distant Thrace for me, so I should have known all about snakes and long grass. It was a sudden, sharp pain; the snake’s teeth, my bare foot. I should have known better. The snake slithered back into the long grass, left beaded blood but no punctures. I danced and it smeared on my skin, blood and poison, and did me no harm, and all of the warmth came rushing back, like an orgasm, like all of the light in the world. And I actually saw the sun.

For a moment, I was frozen but so warm.

On my wedding day, the sun was shining and I stood naked while they brushed out my long hair. The grave-dirt, the particles from that grey sky fell to the round like silver sparks and I was free of it, then. For a moment. For a time, at least. My body was a circle, and I was beginning all over again.

The dress laces on around me…it needs me for structure. Without me, there is no dress, you see. Without me, there is no dress, and without him there is no me, and without us…

There is no world without us, only the grey sky and the long white road.

Eurydice, they’re calling and, ready at last, I lift my arms, pointing only to myself this time. They same my name again, calling me to my wedding: Eurydice, which means ‘width’ and ‘justice’ and if anyone deserves all of the justice in the whole wide world then it is me and him. It is Orpheus and me.