You already see at the mouth.
I taught a class on poetry and the unconscious,
and I brought in some Eurydice poems.
This is how I led myself out of a place so dark
that when I looked back, I could not see it or refuse to see it.
These words came as water.
My body writ in water, turning through memory
in search of the lapidary inscription.
The answer and what binds me to my death.
If I will find it.
If I will let it drown.
If I will use it to write this instead.
What would it be to match the depths of hell
with my own light?
Made and mangled as a beast that bites
both what is good and evil.
Fingers groping for a face through
the black and invisible.
Wet feet clawing on the maw of the underworld.
I was a woman.
I suffered.
I was there.
It is late where you are and where I come from.