turn

She was piercingly sweet
I can barely remember
shoulder blades fading tips of wings
and swirls of gown at her delicate ankles
And a voice or a laugh or a song that trembled
with my chords and my lyre

only ever was for her
The memory is a grainy photograph
or a half-plucked melody
dissolving in my throat or at my fingertips
Notes that disappear before they ever
waver in the air
like her lips or her laugh or a song

Her corpse
smelled of sage
I threw myself upon her pyre
and refused to blink
My hair swam in sweat in curls across my brow

and then the cold
and the dark
the incorporeal air
the slow and dragging styx
oozing on and on past

I played morning on the lyre
to light the way

my voice was an urn
and I begged with it
My song pleaded through the blue and mist
the shifting sprites and angry waifs
halted
in their misery
to listen

My song dripped
sweeter
than
stalactites
fluting on the breath of ghosts

cerberus purred
and tears of stone chiseled down her majesty’s cheek

and then the journey home
The miserable and glorious trek
the lyre chafed my shoulder
and the blister began to run

my ankles ached for not knowing
her breath? her voice? her song?
and my chin shifts just to peek
but I don’t

I don’t
but the specters taunt me walking
and my knees are already giving
and they whisper that she has fallen
but hermes firmly at my back—

So I hum a song of morning
that I plucked out in the sunshine
when her eyes prismed promises
and her lips caressed my tune

And I see it
I see it
the fog begins to break
pillars of light burst through the brackish air
The sun! My love, hurry along! Apollo welcomes our return!

and then

I think I only saw her pink lips
shifting back to cold gray crescents
or perhaps a swirl of gown around her kicking feet

So this is my last song
and I admit it is not very good
My voice is a tomb
my mouth
an open
hollow scream