As I scribble these words, I imagine what it would feel like to be in the arms of Orpheus again. I wonder if he’s half-rotted in Hades. Would his flesh peel off in chunks as we embrace? Would I sip rancid puss in our kiss? He’s dead, after all.
Regardless, we’ll find each other again. We can’t help it. We’re magnetic beyond the constraints of worlds. Truly, the connection I had with Orpheus was stronger than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. Even though he’s deceased, the link still feels more intense than any other I’ve had with another human.
Everyone tells me I need to find a brand new lover, like that Dead or Alive song. When I ask them what’s the point of dating, when I’m waiting to find out if necromancy is a valuable science, they usually back off.
Despite my silliness, the harrowing sorrow of Orpheus catapulted from hell to here, causing my bones to ache in empathy.
"Save your apologies for when you see me," I’d say to him if I could.
"And aside from my emotional missing you, I want your insides to melt at the thought of me," he says to my mind.
Little does he know, they do all the time. Gushing and gooey, each cell plots how to transform the physiological response to thoughts of him into a reality of being with him again.
"I’m selfishly glad you still think about us. Nothing’s worse than memories unremembered," I say to him, but maybe to myself, wishing he could hear me as I squeeze a mountain of pillows on my daybed. Nothing says celibacy like a daybed. Not that I ever bring anyone home.
Because unconditional love and connection is greater than superficial, officious transaction, says every stoic part of me when a toady attempts to touch me with their wallet.
Orpheus was never materialistic like that, and neither was I, but we attracted the insipid and cruel. We deserved better but didn’t really believe it—I don’t think.
By the way, if Orpheus could hear me, I’d plead with him that we cannot be in a constant state of in between. It’s time for our reunion and the sexiest of whimpering shambles. We’ve suffered far too long, coexisting as distant pairs in incessant longing. But that’s just our fervent electricity, without bodies to exchange the current going all haywire in me.
I’m beginning to think it’s time to start letting him go. I can already feel him dancing in the light, beyond galaxies, but still within earshot.
One day, I’ll break free from this matter. When I do, Orpheus, I need you to be ready for me because it’ll be a quantum marvel when I launch from Earth to wherever you are. My soul glides down your remorse, and we embrace in a bed of starlight. Hope you’re not too tired when I arrive, my love. Picture this: I’m outside your door wearing only a trench coat and time travel. The bangles on my wrist resemble Saturn’s vanishing rings—ephemeral markers of the times we were together.
"Fuck me, please, I want more of you to make up for a lifetime without feeling you," I say, as I lower myself onto his erect regrets. Bouncing through each missed opportunity. Honey covered and swollen with the desire for realness.
"Yes, please bite my nipple just a little," I say, so I know it’s not just another dream.
Orpheus, can we find a way to reconcile the loss of each other? Because it’s what we need. The only emollient that occurs to me is to bleed my lamentation onto these pages until I’m all cried out, or the heart stops beating altogether, whichever comes first. I hope it’s the former because dying of a broken heart sounds utterly miserable and too tragic, even for a poet.
Orpheus, be quiescent if you dare; we both know our magnetism pulsates beyond space and time. It’s kind of driving me a little batty if I’m honest.
So at night, when I should be asleep, I cut up our printed messages and weave them into our story. It has officially been a tsunami of release and healing—a mess of ink and stain.
"I want to drink you up," we’d say to each other. It’s been too long, and I need as much as I can get, so send me love letters in seraphic dreams, my dear Orpheus.
"Just surrender to my pussy as we rock," I’ll say when you haunt me next, your head buried in my thighs, our eyes glinting sparks of lust and love, emitting swathes of light, we circulate on a cloud of sublime extasis.
I want you now more than ever, but you’ve gone to somewhere unknowable.
Have you ever had a crush on a dead guy? I mean, one you knew when he was alive, of course. If you haven’t, don’t. Mourning for the dead is normal; wishing them back between your legs is delusional.
Fantasy and prose poetry offer solace, but the ghost of Orpheus still makes a mess of me.
