Eurydice at the Mouth
This is how I led myself out of a place so dark
that when I looked back, I could not see it,
or refused to see it.

These words came as water, my body writ
in water, turning through memory in search
of the lapidary inscription—the answer
and what binds me to my death.
If I will find it; if I will let it drown;

if I will use it to write this instead.
What would it be to match the depths of hell
with my own light, made and mangled as
a beast that bites both what is good and evil?
Fingers groping for a face through the black
and invisible. Wet feet clawing
on the maw of the underworld.

I was a woman, I suffered, I was there.
It is late where you are and where I come from.
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