In which you play Orpheus,
And you are broken-hearted and desolate.
The loss of your Eurydice for the
Second and final time,
Carves your soul into
Mourning lyrics in a language
Only the bereft can decipher.

In which you stand there, frozen,
Mourning the first and only time
Turning towards your lover
Has ended in heart-break.

In which you play Orpheus,
But this time,
The Gods decide to make you
Suffer
Instead of ending you.

In which you are Orpheus and
You have just lost your Eurydice,
But also,
In which you have been granted
Immortality
Until reaching an age the Gods decide
Your existence on this plane
Without HER
Can cease.

In which you are newly-immortal,
And your immortality is certain-
And you refuse to disclose just how
You know it to be fact.

In which those pages of your book -
With the screaming and the
Crying and the
Desperate clutching,
Are stuck together never to be read aloud,
And that's how you prefer it to be.

In which you are Orpheus
And you can't escape Her.
She whispers through the trees.
She cries desperately for you
In the thunderstorms.
The cheeky quirk of Her lip is
Reflected on other people’s faces …

And it HURTS.

By Gods,
It HURTS.

The absence in your life
And soul so profound that you
Cannot breathe.

In which you attend the group sessions,
Just like your friends suggested,
But the way in which the facilitator
Says Her name makes you
Clench your fists and
Refuse to make eye-contact with
Anyone.

This suffering is overwhelming,
But sharing it would be like
Sharing what little of Her
You have left and-
You're not strong enough to let that go.

In which you lose control one day,
Throwing a chair across the room
When the soft-spoken woman
To your right,
Who is wearing her hair like She used to,
Speaks your name in Her timbre.

In which you become a cyclone,
A Category 5 descending on the home
You used to share,
Snatching up all of Her things and
Hurling them into a space
Never to be seen again.

Everything seems to pause as you
Come across a picture of
The two of you.
Everything gets deceivingly quiet
As the eye of Cyclone Orpheus
Overtakes you.

Your eyes dart from smiling eyes to
Lovestruck smile, and
All of a sudden,
The storm is back in action.

Smashing,
Crashing,
Banging,
Screaming,
Crying -
Your rage is
s u f f o c a t i n g
and
t e r r i f y i n g,
But FUCK
Does it feel good to cause damage,
Even though the chaos you can create
Is no match for the damage
She caused YOU, and -

...You've ripped the picture in half
And are suddenly human again,
Kneeling in the centre of your carnage
As you realise what you’ve done.

In which you quietly and reverently
Pack up the rest of Her belongings,
Vowing to actually attempt
Living
The rest of your life.

For Her if no-one else.

In which time passes and
You lose track of it -
Surviving one day becomes
Surviving two,
Then three,
And soon,
Years,
Decades - maybe even centuries-
Pass, and it’s only after you catch yourself
Smiling as you think of the sweet
Grecian girl with the dazzling smile
You’ve bumped into a few times,
That you realise you’re not
Occupied with thoughts of
Your Eurydice.

In which you graze your shoulder as you
Scramble to where you’d left all of Her stuff
To collect dust.
Light floods the space and you scurry to
Surround yourself in Her presence again,
To prove you haven’t stopped
Thinking about Her,
That you haven’t given up on Her,
That you haven’t
f o r g o t t e n
Her.
"See? See!
I’ve still got that scarf you wore every year,
And that photo album from that one time...
And see, see,
Look at all the SHIT I have that
Proves I can’t live without you!"

You stop.

Breathe in and out deeply…

In which you play Orpheus,
And have lost your Eurydice.
In which you realise that between
Forcing yourself to be busy
So you didn’t have time to grieve,
And doing your best to live
As She would have wanted,
You had found a way to grieve,
To move on,
And to live without her.

In which you no longer grieve,
But can still hear Her
Softly whispering through the trees.
You can hear Her in the thunderstorms.
You can see the cheeky quirk of Her lip
In people you’ve since befriended.

And you are still okay.

The reminders bring back
Fond memories, now,
Reminding you of the time you DID
Get to spend with Her,
And the happiness you felt then
That you can recognise again now.

In which you play an immortal Orpheus who has lost his Eurydice,
And you realise She is gone,
But not forgotten.
© O.M.A

Note: this is probably my favourite poem out of all the ones I've ever written. I'm quite proud it, and I'd love to know what you think :)

#poem #poetrycommunity #Grief #lost #GreekMythology #Love&love #relationships #healing #personal #writco