Why Does Orpheus Turn Back? | Descent Issue #4

CHLOE WONG

Because anonymity begins with black fog and something behind you. Orpheus is all tenderness and soft things and he craves the taste of matrimony because it holds him together, his body stable. Otherwise, he falls apart like a wedding cake. Waiting.

Because he doubts all he could hear was the sound of the winds, wailing. Perhaps it is the fates singing of the tragedy he inhales, exhales, inhales again. Lachesis weaves a sweater out of his misery. When Orpheus turns, Eurydice falls upon a second death. She walks into the belly of the underworld, her ankle stinging like a bite.

Because he realizes that his memory will not leave him, a certainty that something that would never die before him and that to immortalize is to be remembered. When he turns around, watches Eurydice’s body dissolve in death, he knows that he’ll never be alone. What is grief if not the grit of love?

Because he turns for nothing. But you know those poets, those romantics. They’ll think of something.

Because as he wades past the stench of death he arrives at the threshold of the mortal realm, and beneath his foot he hears a slight but sickening crunch. Stamped to the bottom of his sole is the torn body of a butterfly, its wings crumpled like a dried leaf against his muddy heel, flaking off like skin. And he realizes that to be beautiful is to be temporary two-fold.

Because behind him, the snap of a twig.