The Mythology of Memory
Wednesday Prose Poem Prompt: Orpheus unbound
I think I know you — you seem so familiar, a dream I have had over and over, dancing like a retinal afterimage, crimson under eyelids closed against the sun. You must be a poet or a musician with a voice like that, vocal cords perfectly tuned for beauty. If I reached out and touched you, would my fingers trace the map of your lines and planes and freckles by heart? Does the soul still remember what the body has forgotten after flesh has become waxy and cold?
I must know you. I once fell into eyes as deep as yours and nearly drowned. Eyes that promised me an eternity, everything. But venom didn’t care for declarations, put a stop to sentiment and left me with twin pinpricks —
a fanged constellation — and darkness. Now I cannot recall his face, except for those impossible eyes, but you — here, now — you make the fuzziness
come into focus, lighten from pitch to pale gray like the first whispers of dawn diluting the night.
Perhaps if you kiss me, I will remember — the aria that your lips sang against mine, the heaven that you plucked for me on gilded strings. We have to try, don’t we?
And suddenly I am not shy or uncertain, I am shaking with want, ravenous for the truth of us, to explore the pearl-filled…
