JUVEN
What if Eurydice Only Loved Living?
by Laura Ma
What I Eurydice Only Loved Living?
i.
WINGS black and charred from incense rolling,
phantom moths crowd and corner your face.
false concentric eyes stamped on your skull stare
at ghostly sages descending, hands WITHERED in this house o bone.
You hear the huang quan gushing with
MEMORIES, quick torrents stripping away the
electricity in your soul, PIERCING flesh
to take a palmful of achings away from the rib cage:
This is what forgetting feels like.
Two hands wrap around yours,
arms lifting, your body oats like the moon.
COLDNESS leaves you, ticklish wings warming,
levitating with the air. silk weaves back into gossamer,
a veil red as lanterns draped over your head.
(Tattered silk hangs from your skeleton. rewind
time; rewind grace to a wedding as blessed as fire,
smoke and brilliance danced with the foliage of trees: indigo
bleeds through your veins. a serpent sleeps beside a spider lily grave.)
A zither murmurs echoes of the living,
reverberating through your brain, softness BLOOMING
on your skin when HE SINGS for you, an epiphany of
fragments and moments and stories circulating. you
see him --
Eyelashes quivering, lips shivering, astronomical moths
utter back to your face. yearning stains your bones, and
an empty heart thrums EMPTY PROMISES to Orpheus.
YOU take the bowl from Meng Po and drink in honor of him.
Moths MORPH INTO butteries; you cross that bridge ANEW.
You are Eurydice in your one thousandth LIFE.
i.
WINGS black and charred from incense rolling,
phantom moths crowd and corner your face.
false concentric eyes stamped on your skull stare
at ghostly sages descending, hands WITHERED in this house o bone.
You hear the huang quan gushing with
MEMORIES, quick torrents stripping away the
electricity in your soul, PIERCING flesh
to take a palmful of achings away from the rib cage:
This is what forgetting feels like.
Two hands wrap around yours,
arms lifting, your body oats like the moon.
COLDNESS leaves you, ticklish wings warming,
levitating with the air. silk weaves back into gossamer,
a veil red as lanterns draped over your head.
(Tattered silk hangs from your skeleton. rewind
time; rewind grace to a wedding as blessed as fire,
smoke and brilliance danced with the foliage of trees: indigo
bleeds through your veins. a serpent sleeps beside a spider lily grave.)
A zither murmurs echoes of the living,
reverberating through your brain, softness BLOOMING
on your skin when HE SINGS for you, an epiphany of
fragments and moments and stories circulating. you
see him --
Eyelashes quivering, lips shivering, astronomical moths
utter back to your face. yearning stains your bones, and
an empty heart thrums EMPTY PROMISES to Orpheus.
YOU take the bowl from Meng Po and drink in honor of him.
Moths MORPH INTO butteries; you cross that bridge ANEW.
You are Eurydice in your one thousandth LIFE.
ii.
Wings withered.
memories piercing,
coldness blooming -
HE: sings empty promises.
YOU: morph into a new life.
Wings withered.
memories piercing,
coldness blooming -
HE: sings empty promises.
YOU: morph into a new life.
Laura Ma is a high school writer from California. Her work appears in the Paracosm Literary Journal and will be forthcoming in the Pollux Journal. Over the weekend, you can find her listening to anime soundtracks and wishing that it would rain. She tweets @goldenhr3 on Twitter.
