Consorting With Death

There are those who think they have seen death. Some boast that they have courted it, defied it, know it by name. They describe it as a dark-cloaked figure whose face they cannot see, a black-plumed bird that lingers in the shadows everywhere they go, a limbless wraith in ghastly suspension above the floor.

But I know better.

Death is a beautiful woman.

I come to meet with her often, those nights where I have stumbled barefoot through the sharp darkness of the forest, with the sorrow-birds making their piercing, keening calls overhead, and the leaves of thin black guilt floating down to meet me. Many a time have I felt the whisper-breeze chill against my skin, flung myself to the poppy-strewn soil to better drown in the blood-red rain. But she is never there to greet me. She is locked into her freezing shadow-world, dear detestable Persephone, looking mute askance at me from beneath her clouded-glass pane.

Cross-legged as in days of youthful innocence I keep her company, separated from her bloodless charm only by this ice. I have aged a century in these few years, yet she is always the same, her dark hair billowing into airy clouds in the freezing grey water, her perfect face remote, as though she does not care much for this world-weary child of the earth, already more spirit than substance. But her eyes are watchful, and her long-fingered hand is always ready, outstretched to crack the surface and to lead another lost soul down, down, down, into the drowning dark.

Toil and care lead me this far, and each time I believe will be the final journey, the pilgrimage to that silent place, the end of all things. Yet every time, crouching there, close enough to feel her poison-breath upon my cheek, something urges me to pull away. Instinct or vain hope, I look away, and at that precise moment the whole insipid landscape falls away as though shedding a dead skin.

You are there.

You are warm, and you are whole, and phantoms flee from the blade of your will to live. You lead me to a path that will take us safely home. But I look back.

Death is a beautiful woman, and she will haunt my heart until I am her slave.