Eurydice's Lament JoSelle Vanderhooft Forgive me, Orpheus. Your music moves stones to skip and rivers from their course. Even the winter queen weeps— night and sleet down cheeks long stilled to granite in this place of earth and bloodlessness. But it cannot move me. Your lyre all seven strings picking all things lively—streams the heavy pear trees and the leaping stones up into a wreath of notes. How can this music move me now I drink dust and gnaw the mountains' roots except further into darkness, further through the asphodel that shake like snow? You play so hard, beloved your quick hands pluck blood beneath your cuticles. Each note is blood. and still, I do not move to follow you. Ah, Death is dark, my foolish love. Too dark to hear, too dark for you to see. Forgive me, Orpheus. Your music moves the ash queen to tremble— ash trees spring-shaking rain across her cheeks— apples now, not blistered pomegranates. The memory of it. And the death king sits still as steel. His eyes flint- locked upon your fingers (picking life-blood like April-ripe pears) in his den of dust and timelessness. And it cannot move him. Your lyre all seven strings straining desire—leaves shaking, apple-flush the boudoir sighing and the rain's increase. How can it move him, he who knows but darkness and the grave's surcease? You play so well, beloved your clever hands pluck blood in his queen's veins until she weeps, "enough! My lord. It is enough." Each note is pain and still, I do not move to follow you. For Death is pain, my foolish love. More than lyre can tell, more than you can explain. Forgive me, Orpheus. But you should have known no tears, no hope or begging selfish, beautiful or hollow can bring back the notes once they have been played. and the dead cannot be moved to follow from this place of shale and wintering. You should have known this as all poets know that though the winter queen weeps apple blossoms and ice breaking in the stream's increase, the death king is a liar. And though you walk back to the world of air breath trem- bling like the jangle of your strings, I will not follow. Forgive me, Orpheus. You music cannot be for me. I know it as I know you cannot bear the possibility that I will not follow. You must turn and see. You must turn back and see— Oh, Death is cruel my poor, foolish love and just. No Eurydice but quaking asphodel and dust. You wail so loud, beloved your quick hands strike seven strings until they bleed. Forgive me, Orpheus. Your music was so beautiful. JoSelle Vanderhooft is a previous contributor to Cabinet des Fées. She graduated from the University of Utah in 2004 and has been roaming around the United States ever since. She is the editor of an anthology of Sleeping Beauty, Indeed, a collection of lesbian-themed fairytales for Torquere Press. Her works can be found in upcoming issues of Star*Line Magazine and the Prime Books anthology Jabberwocky #1. Her essay "The Most Important Letter of Your Life" is also slated to appear in an anthology of young gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender writing. A benefit for the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) it will be released from Random House/Knopf in 2006. She also writes for several newspapers and magazines. Image: Orpheus at the Tomb of Eurydice, Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) back to bequest