PROSE: A Show of Smoke and Mirrors: Hades and Eurydice

Art by Aldwin Li, staff artist

Eurydice's breath rattled like the snake who caressed her neck, “Is that why you stole me so early? Because you love me?” And Hades looked at her with an empty gaze, one of coals that have long gone cold. His voice was a fraying drawl as he pondered her question, “Love you?”

“I will love you as death loves life, as fire loves rain, and as a hurricane loves the sky and ground that it drowns. I will love you as lightning loves the matchstick trees and as Fate loves two people who cross paths once only to have their strings cut. I will love you as Grief loves it’s only widower, a sun-clad figure named Laughter. I will love you as Orion loved Artemis with her moonstruck eyes and as the scorpion loved Orion’s screams. I will love you until my fingers break and run away to dance in the sultriest of nightclubs with your knuckles. Until War kisses Aphrodite without burning her lips in the process, until he falls to his knees and offers her every drop of innocent blood as if she were an altar. Until she presses a white rose to his chest and walks away.

I will love you as seventeen-year-old boys love to speed along highways at dusk, high on their own invincibility. I will love you as knives love a backless dress, as tequila loves that girl sprawled in a halo of her own tears, as whiskey loves the man sinking into his barstool until his heart matches it’s wood. I will love you as shame loves bare skin adorned with bruises, as glass loves to shatter, as clouds love to blacken and roil. I will love you as the Titanic loved that iceberg, as her violins loved to sing until the hands playing them froze and sank, a watery consummation. I will love you as grime loves subway cars, as cigarette smoke loves to wind its way in and ink caution tape on our lungs.

I will love you as crows love telephone lines, whispering my tragedy between their purple wings in a warning croak. I will love you as the poison from that snake loved the destruction of your blood. As I love flame and the way it dwindles in your eyes. I will love you as much as I hate her for leaving me, as I love the shrieks of every tortured soul. I will love you as I love forgetting her when I’m with you and as I crave the wine in her laugh. I will love you as I miss her twirling walk. The most beautiful walk I’ve ever seen, as she walked away from me.

I will love you as deeply as a man waiting for his beloved loves a smoke and mirror show; a devastating distraction. And when Persephone twirls back into my arms,

I will love her as much as I swore I loved you.”

Eurydice’s mouth slackened slightly, the tension leaving her frame as languidly as life did as she slid to Hades’s feet in a puddle of innocence. Yet her eyes were drawn to his barren chest, glowing pale under an onyx robe. And only the white rose inked on his blackening heart heard her as she whispered, “I’m waiting for someone too.”

#greekmyths #hadesandpersephone #eurydice

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Esti Goldstein is seventeen years old and lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio where she has long been inspired by the beauty of the suburbs where she is especially grateful for autumn. Much of her inspiration comes from her own life, the current culture (no, Snapchat is not included), and the stories that she has been told. You can often find her running, laughing with friends, writing (of course), and her mother’s favorite: doing nothing, which she would rather call daydreaming.

Aldwin is a wannabe artist from Hong Kong about to be dumped in the deep end of his first-year English literature course. On his quest to become a writer-artist he unfortunately has yet to retreat into a mountain hermitage, perfect his craft and forget that everything exists. He has attended programs at the Interlochen Summer Arts Camp and Iowa Young Writers' Studio, but for the most part he is a self-taught dabbler. (Becoming a mountain hermit will have to wait.) He seeks to express through art and writing and help others do the same, almost as much as he has a slightly unhealthy addiction to self-deprecating dry humour. In his free time he does anything, from performance martial arts to creating fictional languages to playing jazz piano. He probably needs to drink less coffee.