Lyra

As the riptide beat my body through the current, twisting and distorting my shape, my stomach clenched in a fear so primal I would have screamed if my lungs weren’t already full of saltwater.

I was losing my battle with consciousness as wave after wave of water assaulted my face, unrelenting in its singular pursuit to keep me under. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t logic my way out of this imminent disaster. I could feel the beginnings of my brain surrendering. Telling my body, my mind, my soul that it was time to yield, to stop fighting. And as my body obeyed, submitted to my last desperate directive, my last thoughts were of her. Of May. 

I don’t remember much after this. Small fragments of broken memories. My mind, part of it still reeling from its abrupt and terrible resolve, granted me that small mercy.

After the last bubbles of air leaked from my lungs into the water, I was roughly hauled up out of the water and dragged, dripping and half-dead, onto the rescue boat. I was revived quickly, and all I remember is blinding light and a burn so deep in my lungs that I tried to claw at them from the outside. Clearly still in shock, I fought through the agonizing ache and jumped back into the water. 

WHERE WAS MAY.

I’m told I emerged from the sea, onto the shore, wailing and screaming and frantically searching through the shallow waters, crying her name over and over. Utterly spent and mortally exhausted, I collapsed in the sand, a pitiful lump of misery. 

When I came to in a hospital bed, I already knew. I could tell by the sympathetic looks and unnecessary gentleness from my nurses. I could hear my family in the hall. Their soft murmurs reflecting my own grief back to me.  

They told me they’d found her. Blue, lifeless, and otherwise unblemished. Her body had been carried on the current and drifted close to the shore, where searchers tried in vain to resuscitate her. 

A freak accident, the investigators determined. A rogue wave knocked our small and simple skiff with such force that we went flying. Our loose-fitting life jackets were violently ripped from our bodies and we were sent under, meeting the worst kind of inescapable rip tide. Truly, it was an accident. Regardless, the gravity of the grief was insurmountable. 

I was trapped in memories. Couldn’t face the thought of living in this world without her in it. They played on loops, consoling me, crumbling my resolve to reenter my new hellscape of reality. 

She was the first person who ever saw me. Looked right at me with her warm hazel eyes and flashed me a devastatingly genuine smile. I remember that first meeting so well. I can still feel the impact of her initial attention crashing into me, rendering me speechless. 

She loved me, my May. Embraced all my odd quirks and strange hobbies. We’d sit together for hours, silent, with her reading over my shoulder, tapping my shoulder when she wanted me to turn the page. Her golden hair cascading down my shoulder like a waterfall at sunset.

She encouraged me and my music, hyping me up and getting me gigs she knew I’d be too embarrassed to do on my own. And there in the crowd, my little party of one, eternally cheering me on. The first time I ever played my guitar for her, she wept. She told me later that she’d never been so moved by music and that she could see my soul in vibrant splashes of color. 

And I, in turn, loved her fully, unreservedly. There was never anyone else for me, so devoted was I to her. She’d had an unstable father and absent mother and was mistreated as a child. It took quite a lot of time and space and trust for her to be close to me. At first, she’d let me lay next to her while we slept. Eventually, she allowed me to rub small circles on her back until she drifted into slumber. Over time, with patience and love, she’d let me kiss her slowly, languidly, like we had all the time in the world. I thought we did. We never slept apart after that. I’d sing her to sleep and watch her long lashes flutter close and her breathing even out. Only then would I let myself rest; our pinkies twined together. Our nightly promise to be there in the morning. 

She had always felt an affinity towards the sea. It was never really the water, but the unblemished view of the sky at night. The endless, sweeping landscape of stars and suspended galaxies.

When she was little, and her father drunk, she’d lay outside in her nightgown, look up, and fantasize about a life beyond her fences. Knew within her heart of hearts she’d eventually escape the binds of her intangible prison. 

When we began our life together, she’d tell me the stories of the stars. Fervently justify the deeds of the gods or condemn them for their brash immorality. Justice comes for all, even the gods, she’d passionately declare. 

So, we saved our money and moved to the coast. We bought a cheap little telescope and spent our nights in the sand, pinkies entwined, recalling the ancient horrors and heroics that forever shaped and influenced our skies with tales of devotion, integrity, honor, and wickedness.

Her favorite, that she would recount to me time and again, was the story belonging to the Lyra constellation. The ultimate tragic love story. The constellation itself is meant to resemble a lyre, a stringed musical instrument that belonged to the Greek musician and poet Orpheus. Much like my guitar and my melodious songs, she’d wink with that smile. 

And so, our backs on the cool sand, she’d weave the myth together for me, all while pointing out the stars and tracing the shape of the lyre with the tip of her finger. 

Dreamily, she’d recount for me that when Orpheus was young, the god Apollo gave him the golden lyre and taught him how to play such lovely music. He was quite the enchanter, so the story goes. He’d lived quite an exciting life, saving the Argonauts from Sirens and even charming inanimate objects with his skilled use of his lyre. 

Then, as it always did when we got to this part, her voice would gentle, and she’d squeeze my hand and tenderly put her head on my shoulder. For, he loved his wife more than anything in the world. His Eurydice. She was bitten by a venomous snake soon after they were married, and she had died. Orpheus found his beloved, dead, and he played and sang his sorrow. A lament so powerfully evocative that even the gods were moved, and they pitied his terrible misfortune. They instructed him to travel to the underworld and beg Hades and his wife Persephone to give her back to him. He did as they directed and indeed, his song of grief and mourning moved them both so much that they agreed to let Eurydice come back to the world of the living on one condition. A test of patience and faith.

He was ordered to walk back to the land of the living and not look behind him. He could not look at her, could not know that she was behind him, or else he might lose her forever. Like most men, he thought himself patient, at least enough for this simple task. So, thrilled, he began his climb back to the living. Feeling helpless, not being able to hear her footsteps behind him, he thought the gods had tried to trick him. Only a few feet away from mortal reconciliation, he let go of his patience, of his conviction, his faith, and turned around, only to see that she was there all along. He had to watch, helpless, as her spirit was dragged back down to be imprisoned with Hades forever. 

She’d stop here. Never telling me the rest of the story, of how Orpheus died soon after, never knowing if they would be reunited in death.  

I knew enough about my sweet May to recognize the parallel pain. Of how hard it was for her to trust me, to trust any man, to be patient and deserving and true. 

Gods how I miss her. 

It’s been a year. Today, it’s been a year since I lost her. Since I woke to a world with no music.  One moment we were planning our future, and now here I am, alone in the sand, looking up at the vast expanse of the infinite night sky. Wishing on a few stars that they were reunited in death. That love is eternal. That she knows I’ll wait for her even in death. That I would have trusted her to be behind me.

I close my fist and try to imagine it’s her small hand, forever intertwined with mine.