Our love was mythic.
The story of Eurydice

followed me everywhere.
Hadestown, the opera,

a novel by Salman Rushdie.
It could not bode well.

In Ovid, Orpheus makes the muses cry
with the beauty of his lyre.

What would have happened if he played
a Stradivarius? These are the finest instruments

due to disaster. Drought caused the tree rings
to grow tightly, producing resonant wood.

As a child, I tried the violin but all strings
screech. Instead of practicing, I snuck

into my parents’ bathroom
when my father showered.

I was not interested in nudity.
Only the way he let warm water

into his open mouth
then ejected it like a fountain.