Elegy for Pandora

I remember the first time I heard you laugh. My life had been nothing but cold winds and starless nights, but your laugh set my world ablaze. Never had I heard something so free, so ethereal, so mesmerising, so shameless in its artifice. Your laughter was a ballad, an epic, a choir in perfect harmony, a stasimon in a tragedy. From the moment I heard it I was enraptured, ensnared in the lies I believed it promised.

You were beautiful, you were perfect. You were all I wished to be, all I knew I would not. Clothed in silver, adorned in gold, crowned in a garland of thistles. Your mind was sharp, your tongue sharper too, and though your words were honeyed, your kisses tasted of vinegar.

If I were not such a fool, so blinded by gratitude for the blessings you rained upon us, I would have seen what you were. Perfection such as yours was moulded from deceit, woven with lies, created by the cruel to punish the father’s sins. You carried with you our downfall, yet we were none the wiser.

You played your role conviction. I once believed your innocence. Those eyes so full of wonder, that mouth so quick to smile, your laugh like the first blooms of spring. I looked at you and saw only what you wish to be seen. I loved you only how you wanted to be loved. My gift, I called you. My hope and my joy. You won my trust, and I thought I had won yours.

It was my greatest wish you knew not what you were doing. My greatest wish you were but a pawn. Whatever manner of monster made you I wish graced you with not malice but ignorance. My gift, my hope I pray you were pure. Whatever manner of sin descended upon you I pray to be a product of your puppeteer and not a pestilence of your soul. I pray, wherever you may be now, you are at peace.

I should have known a mind like yours would spell only disaster. A mind which knows no limits, knows no danger, knows no fear to keep it bound. I confused your voracious hunger for mere curiosity, mistook inquisition for eagerness. There was a dark side to your quest for knowledge, and yet I remained blind or worse still, complicit. Each question you asked I answered, every adventure you had I guided you, blissfully ignorant to the fact each step we took, each step I took, led you closer to the retribution you sought to enact.

I was there when you found it. Fool as I was, I never saw it for what it was until it was too late. I watched as you broke open the world, shattered our quiet with a cry a hundred more voices would take up. From a prison no mortal should hold the key to open, you released creatures far more insidious than your monstrous makers.

Into the world you scattered archaic evils, plagues even monsters feared. Evils we had no name for, no knowledge of until you roused them from their slumber. They burrowed into the earth, plunged into the sea, rotted and ruined and ravaged all they touched. And yet, from that same vast pit these evils had sprung from, I saw one creature, far smaller than the rest, had remained. Tiny this creature was, barely the size of a firefly, and though her light waned and flickered, and her ascent was slow, I could sense a fire within her. I reached for her, cupped her frail form in my hands, held her close to me to cover her from the chaos.

Elpis, her name was. Neither a blessing nor an evil. In my hands her frail form wilted yet bloomed from her body a flower.

I know not where you went for when I stood I found you gone and the prison sealed once more. All that remained was your laugh, until that too was taken, carried away by cold winds.

I sleep beneath starless skies once more, seek shelter from cold winds. I roam a world which evil now stalks us. And yet, even when the night seems endless, the cold unsympathetic to my plight and hatred seeks to poison my mind, I still love you. Perhaps even now I fool myself. If I had not been enchanted by your songbird laugh. If I were to have seen through those lies and deceit. If I had not mistaken hunger for curiosity, if I had not led you down the path of destruction.

For are you truly to blame, my gift, my love, my hope? That is the evil that haunts me most. Doubt that taints my memories of you, that twists your laugh to a cry, your love into an act, your servitude into a sin. Is it true? Were you made for this? Were you built to deceive, your grace and beauty, your talent and wit nothing but a crafted nature, a disguise to conceal the seeds of destruction you harboured within you?

They are looking for someone to blame. They curse your name, but I do not. No matter the doubt that gnaws at me I will not turn my back on you. I must believe you were not to blame, that you were not responsible. Your nature was carved and constructed, unchanging. Your choices were fated, not chosen. You were given a dangerous mind, a curiosity so ravenous. You were not human. You were perfect.

You were Pandora, crafted by gods, and I was the fool who fell for you.

My world is quiet without you. A silence has settled where your laugh once rang, but I wish to keep it that way. Nothing can replace your laugh, your sharp tongue and honeyed words I will keep alive in my memories.

I do not believe you are gone. And so, in this silence, I will listen for your laughter. In this silence I will wait for you.