September 2026

After the bite, the blur.

It was almost a relief—the snake.

The fangs a mercy.

No pain, but a gate opening, and

a rush of cool air from a place

that had always been waiting.

She cupped her hands into the Lethe and

drank until her name dissolved,

until the tumult of him—

the golden lyre, the golden lies, the gaze like leashes—

sank into silt at the bottom of a river.

The judges sent her to the Asphodel meadows.

Not torment. Not joy.

Just clouded in the color of forgetting,

a field where souls drift like ash

that no longer remembers the fire.

She walked without aim,

unwatched, unheld, unclaimed.

Her blood cooled. Her heart,

which he had once vowed to protect,

slowed to the rhythm of nothing.

In the distance, she heard something familiar in the footsteps,

and the waters of the Lethe began to tremble—

The vibration of obsession,

a man who could not abide a locked door.

Why did he come back?

Love does not drag the dead upward

by the roots of their hair.

Love does not smash the seal of the tomb.

He charmed the ferryman with honeyed song,

Lulled the three-headed hound with melody.

He crossed the fiery Phlegethon with waters that boil the wicked,

and remained unburned

because even hell recognizes

a man whose hunger is its own inferno.

He fell to his knees before Hades’ obsidian throne,

before Persephone with her pomegranate stains.

His grief poured out as a raw, ragged song—

Give her back to me. I promise I will not look.

She watched with terror

as the bargain was struck.

Why must he charm the dead awake

just to bury me again?

I would have forgotten him.

I had already forgotten him.

She felt his hand reach for hers—

not a lover's touch,

but a captor's.

The grasp of someone who mistakes

possession for devotion,

control for care.

He led her back to the ferry—

the oars straining against the current,

the caves dripping onto littered bones,

the darkness swallowing their footsteps,

its vastness stealing even the echoes.

Once more, she walked behind him,

not in trust, but in fury.

Each step, a betrayal.

Each breath, his breath,

the same air that had filled her lungs

with promises he could not keep.

At the threshold,

a blinding strip of sky,

the green scent of the living.

She felt his hope surge

like a tide of poison.

And then she spoke.

Not with the soft voice of a wife

or the trembling plea of the pursued.

Her voice was the Styx itself—

cold, final, unbreakable.

Turn back.

He froze.

Turn back now, or I will curse you.

I will not be your Eurydice.

I will not be your prize.

You have no right to me.