In Communion with Calliope is a weekly poetry column by Ivana Devcic.
Eyes as dark as a body of water
that sits still, cradling a cemetery
of dead branches in its depths.
Further inside,
a chthonic pyre gutters smoke,
kindled with unwillingly-given libations.
A body that recalls the curve of stone,
tamed beneath centuries of reverent touches,
heartlessly shatters the mortals who surrender.
Gluttonous, eldritch being,
so thoroughly awash with sacrifice,
that the creaking bones of the world
still salivate in relished remembrance.
And the lips –
when he drinks from them,
those poisonous,
raw, swollen buds,
to oblivion he fervently submits.
He is a being of but a day,
and yet,
when she abandons him
to the monotony of mortality,
and he gazes, in the night,
at a star, far, far away,
he will shudder, weep, and yearn
for the memory of her eternity
that fleetingly engulfed him,
and gave nothing in return.