Today, the forecast in Avernus: heavy fog; flash flood warnings; rising tides from the River Cocytus and Acheron. “New at 11, we’ll see that despite our individual attempts at self-control, lamenting and sorrow will continue spilling into the future,” the weatherman drones, 

and haunted, I think of those ghosts with clipped wings

clicking their tongues at me,

cacophonies of grief in oblivion;

and I think of skies in winter,

fields of baby’s breath punctured by wildfires and

rainstorms swelling with curling smoke,

flocks of gray cutting into blue.

After November burned into April, I mourned 

over memory graves hiding in Lethean shallows;

you only laughed — like rattling dice, 

and I remembered turning around, hearing

the fragments of a “Goodbye.”

But today, leaving Avernus, I glanced back to see 

you alone, drowning in depths of

Stygian foam.