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I. John Keats, in a letter to Charles Brown / II. Anne Carson, Antigonick / III. Aeschylus, Agamemnon / IV. Anne Sexton, The Double Image / V. Leila Chatti,Portrait of the Illness as Nightmare / VI. Margarita Karapanou (tr. by Karen Emmerich), Rien ne va Plus / VII. ??? Unknown
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He has this strange lilt to his voice when he sings. As if the song were a thing, a real one, clawing at the walls of his throat, begging to be let out. The lines split open at the seams, filling his lungs with ichor, gold splattering the pale bone of his ribs, and the song continues, rising, spilling through the open gates of his teeth as he drowns in himself.
The wind carries the notes, born on his breath, off his tongue, kissing them goodnight and laying them to rest as they die out in the evening air. Sea foam gathers around the rock he is perched on: the ocean, too, grovels at the foot of the god and begs to join.
By now the light on the horizon has all but died out. The last slivers of it bend around his figure, terrible and beautiful; looking at him is like watching a city burn. Draped in a tunic and necklaces of woven gold and sea glass, he sits before me, hands clasped in reverence as the song exhausts itself and lays to rest in the space between us.
It is a strange sight: the god, skin scraped by the rock he kneels atop, has his head bowed before his lover as the sun drowns in the ocean. The final fractures of light tumble like glass across the broken tides. You'd think it would be the other way around.
My voice has never been lacking, has never failed me— not before him, not during him, and most certainly not after him. And yet, it falters now; the sight of a god kneeling like a sinner is enough to stun even the greatest of songbirds into silence.
He looks up at me from under his lashes, golden hair falling into his eyes. He seems to glow in the half light; a smile tugs at his face in the form of a slight tear of the mouth.
Naomi. He calls my name. A prayer, a begging to be heard.
Even this, he says like the beginning of a song. I want to ask him to sing for me again, but any more and it will be him who lures me into the depths instead of the other way around. Any more, and I will be the sun instead of him, the devastating star that dies every day so the sea can thrive, a golden god waiting to burn out. Another nameless person at Aphrodite's mercy.
Do you trust me? I ask. I know what I am doing. This has been written since the beginning. Still, I cannot help the way my heart withers when he smiles, a surrender in itself.
As much as I can.
Here, life bursts from every angle, like the disemboweled guts of a fallen god. Time itself seems to slow down, capturing us in dying gold, immortalizing us forever. The bane of Olympus and the golden god turned traitor. The ichor finds its way to the shore, tainting my sacred ground, plastering itself to me like a plague. For the second time today, my words die in my throat; I forget what I mean to say.
