Eurydice's emergence

A poem

i.

A few hundred feet into the underground,
where the city has carved tunnels that serve as
home for the Styx and stalactites.
Dripped calcium, calcified. She writhes.

Drips echo as they hit concrete and 
rodents scamper. They fight over morsels,
screech, unaware they will never feel the sun 
or breeze flow through their fur. 

She is curled in a ball. Tangled in her own flesh.
The veins that pumped poison through her body,
long constricted and tight, ache below her skin.
Bruised and soaked in mildew.

An epoch has passed since The Viper. 
In her wait, she has shrivelled.
Skin grey and cracked. She has contorted.
As time passed, her limbs twisted.

A train passes. 
She howls. 

ii.

In the shadows, The Viper stirs. 
Her shriek bounces through the underground
and He hears. Serpentine tongue hisses, 
Echoing, it morphs into mellow lyre music. 

What can she hear in the distance? 
Is it Orpheus? Enchanted, she wakes.
Her nails tear from her fingers,
caked in rot. When has sun last touched her skin?

Bones crack as she rises, below her,
knees buckle and she is torn to the ground. 
Persisting, she crawls. Her dress, sodden, trails behind her
like ephemeral ectoplasm. It is rot.

Atrophy set in. She fights it, determined.
In her time underground, her body has molded,
like plasticine at the hands of an infant.
She is something new. 

Inching through the dark, rats scream
and so does she. She ascends.
Pain shoots through her, yet she is 
enthralled in her rapture.

Up, up, up. She climbs in agony. Inching closer.
Heavy eyes sting as sunlight peeks 
through the escape of the labyrinth.
Pupils shrink, yet her body grows. Like plumage. 

Hysteria hypnotises her
as she is blinded by the sun.


iii.

On a rare Westminster sunny day, 
retail workers suck nicotine on a break.
Banker’s shoes hit the pavement and dart
to avoid the huddle of tourists.  

She is coughed out from the Earth. 
Cackling and caked in the grime from below.
The creature scrambles in agony. Amorphous.
A child, barely five, notices her and screams.

Onlookers grind to a halt and stare 
as she laughs and laughs and laughs.
What is this monster. Maddened 
by freedom, she contorts herself further.

Among the chaos, her eyes adjust to the light.
Through the corner of her eyes, she sees it.
Just a glance. A forked tongue from the shadows
and she cackles once more.