Handmaids of Apollo

Handmaids of Apollo

By Lily Madison

Adorned with wings of prophecies 

Dive headfirst from femme fatale ether, 

Who bleeds virgin priestesses from her 

Womb of clouds 

They do not glide, 

They limply fall 

Soaked in their rot 

Smelling of the sickly sweet fragrance of 

The decomposing Python 

Whom Apollo hath slain 

Descending handmaids split their necks 

Into wet dirt with news 

As their faces reassemble in my eyes, 

I see the bruises blossoming on their 

Ornate faces 

The sun sleeps on their hair as crimson 

Weeps from their broken necks 

One celibate bends the neck of the maid 

Beside her even further,

Her head barely meeting body 

An array of flowers bloom from the lesion 

And she carefully picks a bouquet from it 

I feel her hearth as she nears, 

And her warm hands encompass mine 

Before she hands me an assortment of 

Lotus, crocus, and rapeseed 

“Thee must tear 

those garlands from 

thy body while thee art 

still pure. Apollo sayeth 

thee shalt soon bleed 

unwilling.” 

I feel flowers grow in my lungs and I 

Collapse in grief, unable to breathe around 

The spring that’s taken residence in my 

Body 

I claw at my face 

And the skin peels like wallpaper 

I bare and gnash my teeth 

And let out a savage cry 

A guttural, 

Back-of-the-throat scream

“I curse the sacrifices 

I made to 

Apollo in vain. 

Carest thou at all 

that I am 

to be ravaged?” 

Blood is drying beneath my nails 

I continue 

“I am to be eaten by a cannibal, 

a barbarian. Eaten down to mine marrow. 

I wilt be nothing but rot, 

leaking blood. 

What God allows 

this for his maid?” 

They look on me with pity, sideways with 

Their broken necks 

And they reach up to the sun and pray 

That my fate shall not come to them.