Forevermore

An Edgar Allan Poe Story

FOREVERMORE

Arranged by Matt Andersen

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September 27th, 1849 - The Chesapeake Bay

Water laps the hull. Wood creaks. A drunk grips tight to the deck’s railing, and I can’t feel my legs. My blood slows into slush. Ritardando. Rose says she hasn’t gone cold in ages.

“All dem happy days are o’re,” the drunk sings. G major but too flat on the third. “Farewell, my dark Virginny bride.”

The ship lists, and this man plants his feet wider than a German accordion. He brings a flask, trembling, to his lips. Rose wouldn’t hesitate to take him. Booze and all. These people, she’d say, they’re nothing without us.

But, of course, I’m the one freezing to death. 

A bird croons, picking up where the drunk left off. A twist into E minor. This animal, it sails between bursts of wind to land by my gloved hand. A robin. Chirping its tune. My fingers tremble worse than the drunk’s flask. Knock on wood, and they’d shatter.

What Rose doesn’t know is we’re nothing without these people. 

I peel off a glove, and the robin hops closer, ruffling its feathers.

What Rose doesn’t know is that these people create what we can’t.

My fingers run down the bird’s back, and its tweets decrescendo into an unwinding string of notes. Spits of flame that melt the ice from my hand. 

“Thank you, young one,” I whisper. The robin sways with the roll of the boat before slowly swooping off. Silent in the air.

A man interrupts. “Excuse me,” he says. “Have we met before?”

His eyes are tired—pale blue and covered by a thin film—I can see myself in them. He pulls an untrimmed mustache. 

“You must…” My voice hitches. D sharp instead of D. How embarrassing. It’s not everyday you get to meet your heroes. “You must have mistaken me for my sister,” I finish.

Rose says I inspired Mozart’s Requiem. I spurred on the Medieval Chants and the Veda Chants. That isn’t even to mention the Song of Seikilos. Why care so much about some used-up poet?

The man reaches out a hand. “Edgar,” he says.

Frost recaptures my fingers. It seems the poor bird only bought me a few quarter notes worth of life. The animal’s shadow passes over Edgar and I, spiraling around the boat as though it were chained to its center. The sad thing can’t fly out of earshot before some invisible line tugs it back.

Edgar’s hand waits.

“It really is you, isn’t it?” I say, finally grasping it. No glove. All skin. “Your work means so much to me.”

Again, sparks of flame arrive to melt my hand. The blood in my arm churns awake, and I grip tighter. DC Al Fine. Back to the beginning. 

“That’s very…nice.” Edgar’s blue irises fade under a milkier stare. Confusion. “Umm, I’m sorry I seem to have forgotten where…I am.”

“The way you write,” I say, digging my fingernails into his skin. “It’s musical.” 

The film over Edgar’s eyes thickens, and my reflection wanes. “And who..are you?” he asks.

“It’s been a long time,” I say, “since someone’s work has spoken to me like yours.”

Rose would say to get on with it. Stop drawing it out. But what Rose doesn’t know could fill one of her books. We’re the daughters of memory, but I can’t even remember how long I’ve been alive.

So I tell Edgar what I can’t tell Rose. I say, “Time doesn’t heal all wounds. There are some that time only makes worse.” 

I tell him, “I’m so sorry about your wife.” 

“Virginia?” His drying lips smack together. “My love, is that…” He pauses to try and remember words that aren’t going to come. Instead, those words unwind. Cursive into legato. From him to me.

Those words, they fuel the beat of my heart. The numb corners of my body burn awake in arpeggio. 

“I’m so sorry, young one,” I say.

I lean in for the kiss. His rough breath flows against my lips, and all parts of myself that I’ve forgotten over the years resonate together. Buzz like a Chinese flute. But I don’t give in. Rose would be rolling her eyes, but I stop myself. 

Edgar’s eyes have sunken into his skull. Too dull to reflect anything now.

“Excuse me,” he says. Sustained monotone. “Have we met before?”

From further down the deck, the drunk sings with renewed vigor and in perfect intervals. “All dem happy days are o’re. Farewell, my dark Virginny bride.”

“I’m sorry,” Edgar says. “I must…be lost.” He stumbles past me, gripping the railing as he lets it lead him away.

The bird continues to circle, and the drunk continues to sing.

Rose says we’re nothing like these people. Consonance and dissonance. Raga and Taal. What could ever come from that, she’d ask. 

I join along with the drunk, humming in counterpoint. Do re me. Saa ri ga. A duet is always more than one plus one.

Rose doesn’t know a lot of things. 

But as we finish our song, as Edgar staggers further away, the robin loses its fight against gravity. The poor little thing falls from the sky. A whistle that drops through the surface of the water like a stone.

October 2nd, 1849 - The Fountain Inn

Sister. Rose. She holds a rag of paper in front of her face. “Life is hard, young troubadour,” she reads. “When you know your wife’s a whore.”

Wood creeks as we walk up to the second floor of the Inn. A rising and falling of semitones. B flat to D. D to B flat. B flat to D. Again and again. 

“Do you think there’s more to life?” I ask. “Than just lighting fires and putting them out.”

We reach a closed door at the top of the landing. Lantern light flickers from the gap in the bottom.

“Leave your family, those wretched bores,” Rose continues to read. “And come take me, forevermore.” She folds the piece of parchment in half, sealing it with an ink-black kiss.

Rose says humans will take any excuse to be alone.

She slides the note under the door, then turns to face me. “You’re not thinking about offing yourself again are you?” she asks. We continue down the hall together. D to B flat. B flat to D. D to B flat. “That’s so…uninspired.”

Edgar’s words trill in my head. Virginia, Virginia. “Everyone we extinguish,” I ask. “Do you think they’re happy after?”

Rose says there’s no greater happiness than not knowing the things you don’t know. Only idiots want to learn stuff. 

I ask, “Have you ever been in love? With one of them?”

The door opens behind us.

“Umm, hello? Ma’ams?” An old sailor stumbles from his room in a fugue, a conductor’s baton of an erection pressed against his pants. “Did you happen to see who left this? Or…” 

His Earth-brown eyes fall to Rose. Vivid. Alive. His instrument pitches higher—held at the ready.

“Love,” Rose says, “is for people who don’t know how to live.”

The sailor stiffens as Rose walks up to him. She has no qualms. She doesn’t even unbutton his canvas pants before jamming her hand down the front. No glove. All skin. Sonata form.

“What do you do?” she asks the man, starting the symphony. “What have you made?”

The sailor stammers. “I…what?”

“Got water in your ears?” The top button on the sailor’s pants pops open by the way Rose is maneuvering her hand. Vivace. Vivace. “What have you created?” 

“I…” He rolls his head back. Skin flush. Eyes dimming. The second button comes free.

Rose slaps him.

“Maps,” the sailor cries. “I like to draw maps.” 

“Maps.” Rose laughs. “That’s better than nothing.”

Rose, that maestro, she guides her victim into the next movement. She yanks and flicks vigorously enough that his pants collapse down to his ankles.

“You see her?” Rose grabs his bright red face and points it at me. “She wants to know if you’d be happy if you could never draw again.”   

Now that their minuet has become a trio, my cheeks flush as bright as the sailors. He shakes his head, and his brown eyes glaze over as Rose begins the finale. 

“Good.” She lets go of his face to take his baton in both hands.

His breath hitches. “Georgia?” he asks suddenly, reaching a hand to Rose. “My love, is that…?” His body seizes, resonating like a baby grand piano. Sustained crescendo. Finale.

Lengths of latitude. Beachside fractals. These lines spurt from the sailor’s wand and twist around Rose’s hand. Geography to calligraphy. From him to her. He stumbles back against the wall. 

“Where…am I?” he asks. “What have I done?”

Rose says nothing extinguishes inspiration better than a good orgasm. 

She crooks her head to one side like a broken metronome. She inspired the Epics, the works of Plato. Chaucer. She’s the reason ink and parchment are so freely available today. And now she’s brushing off old cartographers in the middle of a hallway.

What Rose doesn’t know is how lonely she is.

The man shrieks. Big tears drip from his face, and he shrieks like a shattered cymbal. The Inn wakes up. Footsteps pound. Doors swing open. Tenants rush to see the source of the howling.

As the crowd grows, Rose shrinks next to me, crooking her head in the opposite direction. “Hmmm,” she says. “They normally don’t go that quickly.”

All I can see in my mind is the poor little bird, that robin, plopping through the surface of the Chesapeake. Georgia, Virginia. “What do you mean they don’t normally go that quickly?” I ask.

The man foams from his mouth. Stark mad. He runs up to me, and grips my shoulders. “Life is hard, young troubadour.” He sings this. He sings it like his life depends on it. “But I guess we’re all just fucking whores.” 

He twirls around himself, the floorboards joining in duet as he stomps against them. B flat to D. D to B flat. B flat to E. B flat to F. The wood pitches higher and higher to match the frequency of his singing which is really just laughter now. 

This is when his pants catch on a bent nail. The pants that are still around his ankles. 

This is when the old sailor takes a long tumble down the stairs.

This is how the spectacle ends. With a snap. A bass guitar tuned too tight and played too hard. Caesura. 

People gasp. Even though the man’s neck is a Turkish lute, someone rushes down to try and help. Rose says humans will take any excuse to be alone unless they’re actually face to face with it. Nothing inspires humans more than Death. Not even Rose.  

“What did you mean they don’t normally go that quickly?” I ask again.

“Oh, Songbird,” she says, turning away from the crowd. “You didn’t know?” 

I follow her away from the din, into the sailor’s empty room. “I guess it has been a long time for you.” She picks up her unfolded note the sailor had dropped on the ground. “Life is hard,” she says, “and getting harder.” She folds the note back up, and tucks it away.

“These people,” she says, “they’re so much more sensitive than they used to be. Even the slightest touch can send them right over the edge.”

October 7th, 1849 - Washington University Hospital

My shoes slap the brick path like an Indian drum. A beat that has only multiplied over the last few days as I’ve searched for Edgar. Ekgun to dugun. Double time.

It’s too early for the sun to be up, and all the flowers lining the hospital grounds have folded into themselves to hold onto their warmth. Irises. Knock-Outs. A wall of windows rises above.

Rose said Edgar’s up there somewhere. 

She heard he had a go at Ryan’s Tavern the other night. Straight lost it. Wouldn’t stop babbling about the ghost of his dead wife. People only care about love when they can’t have it, she’d say.

At the entrance, on the stairs leading up to the hospital, a child sits. Singing, “der once were three ravens, sat on a tree.” G minor. Sharp on the fifth. “Dey were…dey were,” he chokes. “I can’t ‘member.”

Rose says nothing matters more to humans than their precious words.

My tempo slows as I approach the child, which allows the flowers along the path to bloom open as I pass. Two irises per beat. 

“Why are you all alone?” I ask. Moonlight glistens against the tears on his face as he looks up to me. His tiny hands clasp onto a shadow of a toy.

What Rose doesn’t know is that when a child is lost, they don’t write poetry about it. Not at first. When a child is lost they don’t pen a fairytale, they don’t draw maps in the dirt. The first thing they do is hum a song. 

Only rhythm can stabilize chaos.

“Where’re your parents?” I ask.

The child lets go of his dark toy, a wooden bird, and points up at the hospital. “Sick. And I can’t sleep ‘cause they aren’t able to sing me the sleepy song.”

Tears beat against his toy. Dampened triplets. 

Some of the windows are half-open, and I listen for signs of life. The snaring roll of someone’s breath. A syncopated heartbeat. Nothing. Grave. The cadence of Death. 

Rose wouldn’t hesitate to leave this child. Toy and all. These people, she’d say, they’re all going to die anyway. It’s just us, Songbird. You and me forever. 

Finally, someone coughs. A familiar timbre coming from the open window right above us. Edgar’s timbre. Not dead yet.

“I’ve been trying to ‘member the words,” the kid interrupts. “So I can just go to sleep already.”

Edgar’s wheezing rattles the still morning, but I don’t leave the child. Not yet. Instead, I take a seat. “Maybe you can make up your own words,” I say, peeling off a glove.

The flowers on either side of us turn on their stems. Petal’s open. A choir of “O!”s. I offer my hand to the child.

My heart beat slows as he takes my palm. Vilambit. Notes pierce staccato through my skin and wind their way around the kid’s arm. Sparks of flame that light up his forest-green eyes. The tears on his face dry away.

“Besides,” I offer with shallow breath, “it’s impossible to sing the same song twice.”

His face lights up. Bright accented eyes. The toy drops from his hands as he springs to his feet. “I have an idea,” he sings, running up the stairs. Flaming into the building. 

As the child’s footsteps drag further away, I pick up the toy. A wooden raven. A note of red shines through its chipped wing. Not a raven. A robin painted black.

“Lord, help my poor soul!” The Knock-Outs. The irises. They collapse at the sound of this scream. Edgar’s scream.

Rose says I should know better by now. Seikilos. Plato. Chaucer. Mozart. Everyone I’ve ever loved has died. Everyone I’ll ever love will die. Everyone but Rose. Ostinato. The song never ends.

But what Rose doesn’t know is that not everything is so one note. 

By the time I get to Edgar’s room it’s too late. The doctor is signing the death certificate. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You just missed him.”

I walk across the cold floor. Ati vilambit. B flat to B flat to B flat to B flat. 

The doctor says, “were you close?”

The wooden bird is warm in my hand, and a bright tune floats in from down the hall. “Der once were three ravens, sat on a tree,” the child sings. “Mommy and Daddy and beautiful me.”

Rose would be losing her own mind. These people, she’d say, they should be thanking us. We’re too giving, Songbird. 

“Writers these days,” the doctor says. “It’s all, pen in one hand, drink in the other.”

He says, “Maybe it greases the wheels, but now no one will get to read his work.”

What Rose doesn’t know, what no one seems to know, is where inspiration really comes from. 

I place the black painted robin in Edgar’s open hand and leave them to rest.