My Eurydice by Louis Cutrona

Hades

a dream at first thin

thickens.

A host of shades

surround me far off keep pace,

do not approach.

One shade separates,

drifts me-ward.

I fear she is so far away she cannot follow even if I never look back.

other shades crowd her,

push her away.

Poe found no balm in Gilead.

to face that she was dead.

I dream I am not dreaming.

In the Souk: Jill is there. How can she still care?

Good news: Some colors Susan can still see.

Bad news: Sandy’s heart is broken.

Autopsy report: Micalyn’s heart was beautiful.

She was dead when they got her.

How could they know?

Cancer

killed as it came.

Chemo

tried to kill her

in the hope that cancer

would die first.

Science sustained;

she healed.

Cancer killed even as it dissolved

and did not care.

She unhealed,

came apart,

dehisced

(oh wretched word).

Once whole becomes pieces,

pieces cannot survive:

devoured from within,

agony of separation.

She could cry only with her eyes.

She could not move

or make a sound

yet I saw her tears pool,

overflow.

I dabbed them away.

And when she had done

the work of dying,

she looked

like a desiccated mummy

high in the Andes,

face frozen,

mouth an O.

the shape of her last breath

Her pain

how can I tell you?

The pain is tall.

The pain is wide.

The pain is heavy.

The pain is deep.

The pain is blunt.

The pain is red.

The pain is black.

The pain is hot—Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! It burns! she cried.

The pain is a red lollipop—red sponge on a cardboard stick

dipped in ice water to soothe her mouth.

The pain is coffee ice cream she loved but could not eat.

The pain is chicken soup she relished but could not sip.

The pain is green hills she could never visit, viewed from her window.

The pain is miles of cornfields she never saw.

The pain is her far-off piano—music she would never make again.

I’m losing control, she said,

and showed me she could no longer move her fingers.

She kissed me, I kissed her she kissed me back, we kissed

every day every morning, every night, and in between,

and when she could no longer speak,

her lips still moved to kiss me back.

When her kiss was gone,

so was she.

The therapist says: We’ve come a long way, Orpheus.

The myth says she was following you, spoke with you.

I tell you she was never there.

You made it up.

Yes, it’s a better story the way you tell it.

You were supposed to bring her all the way back

without looking at her,

but you turned around.

She was pulled back to the underworld.

In truth,

when you turned around,

you were ready

to face that she was dead.