Eurydice Before
Part of the Threads of the Forsaken series.
I was not always a story of loss.
Before the songs,
before the snake’s sharp kiss,
before he spoke my name like a prayer.
I was.
I lived where the trees braided the sky,
where the rivers split the earth’s open palms.
I drank rain from cupped leaves,
sang with the cicadas until my voice dissolved into mist.
I was not a muse.
I was not a crown for a poet’s grief.
I was the green breath of the woods,
the pulse beneath the bark.
They say I fled.
I have always fled.
From hands that reached for what was never theirs,
from mouths that called me beauty as they sharpened their teeth.
Do not call my life a prologue.
Do not name me only in dying.
I lived.
I danced with roots and wolves and rain.
I knew the world before sorrow learned my name.
And when the darkness closed over me,
I did not weep for the life behind me.
I carried it,
folded in my bones —
a wildness the underworld could not steal.
Author’s Note
In classical mythology, Eurydice is remembered primarily as the lost wife of Orpheus, a silent figure whose death inspires another’s grief. Her own life, voice, and spirit are largely absent from the record. She is a moral in a man’s tale.
This retelling restores Eurydice’s existence before tragedy — as a living, loving, and wild soul. She is not defined solely by loss, nor reduced to a symbol of absence. She is voiced.
Here, Eurydice loves freely, lives fiercely, and carries her own story into the darkness — beyond the reach of myth, song, or sorrow.
If you enjoyed this mythical retelling, you may enjoy one of the other poems in the Threads of the Forsaken series.
