Artemis And Apollo

Artemis and Apollo

She thinks that, maybe, long ago, they were gods.

She remembers bleeding ichor and tasting honey and the sound of whispered prayers.

She thinks that, maybe, she remembers the day it all ended.

Did it end? She can’t be sure, because sometimes she thinks the cuts she makes glimmer gold and sometimes her lips taste a little too sweet and sometimes the wind sounds like a murmur of endless devotion.

She thinks that, maybe, she’s memorized the day she went mad.

Although, she can’t tell what is real anymore.

She thinks that maybe, possibly, improbably--

She’s completely sane.

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She remembers she liked to hold her brothers hand, his clumsy fingers intertwined in her own dedicate owns.

She remembers her mother saying they’re one, they’re souls know each other souls, and she remembers trying to map the lines on his palm.

She remembers when she turned thirteen and opened the gift wrapped boxed to a book with a sinister looking crystal ball on the front, and she remembers tracing his lifeline and giggling�"you’re gonna die young, she’d told him.

Twins always die together, at least we’ll be beautiful. 

She’d carve out her heart for him. 

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They were never meant to be forever, because fire was their element and flames burn out quick. 

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She was a wildfire. 

She burned and singed and blazed and, she thinks, destroyed. 

She had smoke in her lungs and ash on her skin and a smile sharp and cutting and painful.

The stars were her calling because she burns and burns and burns until she doesn’t, but the things is, a phoenix always has to rise from it’s own ashes. 

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He’s dangerous.

Not the kind that she is, the slow, methodical, carves you with a smile type. 

No, he was the type that burned bright and hot and fast and set you ablaze, only to kiss it away with whispers of we’re meant to be and come back and god, I love you. 

He was golden and shining and a little too perfect, because perfection always comes with a price, and maybe, just maybe, he sold his soul for his.

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Technically, he says, technically, I didn’t set it on fire.

She looks behind him to the flames soaring up to the sky�"of course you didn’t, she says and opens the door to the car, you completely blew it up.

The smile he flashes her is razor sharp. Perilous. Treacherous. 

He doesn’t deny it, just slides into his place in the passengers seat.

She pressed hard on the gas.

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They were always good at the hunt.

They had that certain predator instinct that led them them to the right prey�"the one with the big doe eyes who pleaded don’t, don’t, don’t before they put bullets through their ribs. Who looked to her because she was a girl and didn’t see her stiletto nails pushing down hard on the trigger. 

After all, when he had said hunt she was the one who had responded death.

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Sometimes, it’s as if her head might split in two. 

Because, really, she should want to set the world on fire. 

But she wants to kiss boys and make them cry.

She wants to kiss girls and make them love her.

She wants to wear soft sweaters and pale pink lipstick and 

That’s too much

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She’s wearing a black, well-worn leather jacket that makes her shoulders look a little too broad and her hips a little two narrow, and her lips are painted a bright, shiny Rouge Allure by Chanel�"she drags a row of perfect white teeth over it, but it doesn’t smudge. 

He walks out of the gas station with a packet of Trident chewing gum and a bottle of coke. And it’s a little too hot, and she stares at the way his throat works and the way his muscles work and how a drop of sweat makes it way down…

Should we let him know we’re onto him? her brother asks, bored, his feet dangling off the hood of the car. There’s a cigarette dangling between his lips and she watches the way the ashes fall�"the way they flash a bright crimson, before dying on the concrete.

Now, she breathes, and turns around, the weapon steady in her fingers, where’s the fun in that?

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The day she goes mad�"

She can’t pull the trigger.

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The day her brother falls with her�"

She can still taste honey on her lips. She remembers how they bled gold.