By Rebecca Bhattacharjee
It was a night torn from Poe’s despair,
January cold, bitter, and bare;
The earth stretched wide, Prometheus’ grave,
Cracked and broken, no soul to save.
Trees like Dante’s tortured hands,
Clawed the sky where no moon stands;
Only lightning’s jagged leer,
A godless Olympus, empty, clear.
A house remained time’s weary shell,
Its walls a canvas where sorrow fell;
Scrawled like Plath’s frantic verse,
Silent screams, despair’s dark curse.
She sat alone, Eurydice lost,
Lips curling soft at love’s dear cost;
A phone slipped quiet from her hand.
A severed thread, no golden strand.
The whiskey flamed like Lethe’s stream,
Her cigarette, smoke and broken dream;
She dressed in red, Persephone’s hue,
A queen descending, the old made new.
In her mind the world unspun,
A stage where lonely witches run;
Her dress flowed dark, her laughter wide,
A scarlet ghost in night’s cold tide.
And he appeared, her Orpheus blind,
The cruel, the distant, the unkind;
She reached, she touched, she held, she bled,
A blade spoke sharp the words unsaid.
Blood bloomed bright, Narcissus drowned,
His fall without a sob, no sound;
She cradled ruin, her vow complete,
Love’s last murder, bitter, sweet.
Back to the room of dust and stone,
She swallowed Lethe, cold, alone;
On crimson sheets, she closed her eyes,
A bride beneath uncaring skies.
No dawn, no search, no lover’s plea,
Only the wind, the whispering tree;
Yet in the void her spirit flies,
A silent star in soulless skies.
So mark the day when winter fell,
And mortal love burned hot in hell;
The red dress stirs where shadows tread,
A tale of love, of death, of red.