ELEGY Poem: Elegy to Artemis, by Delilah Chamberlain

To my Muse,

How do you say hello to someone you’ve shown your soul to? How do you say goodbye to someone who’s seen the inside of your tear ducts more times than you’ve seen the sky? How do you let the sun set on a relationship that kept you alive when Nyx’s night seemed infinite?

Is there any trace of Artemis left in you? I’ve been combing every corner of me for traces of Apollo these days and combing up empty handed. I’ve never seen myself shine as brightly as I did on the day I met you, when he shone his way out of my skin and walked in my footsteps for a day. Is there anything left of the girl who dragged mattresses to my dorm room? The girl who wrote me like I was poetry, who made sense of my drunken ramblings? What has become of the girl who used her broken pieces as tools to repair those around her? Did she cease to exist, or did she simply learn that there were tools for her pieces, too? Was there ever a moment where I knew her unbroken, or did I simply meet her before she lost the strength to hide it?

I still have the letters she wrote me, every one. The looping writing on stationary scraps and the margins of books dedicated to words she thought worlds better than hers. I don’t think I’ve ever read a word of print unless it was highlighted by her hand. Yet, the spine on the book still betrays my compulsion to open it on rainy days.

I wonder if there’s any trace of them left in us, the god of the sun who was put soundly out and the goddess of the hunt who was hunted into extinction. The best I can do these days is a reflection, a mirrorball of traumas is all that’s left of me. It shows you walking the world as a wounded animal, the closest imitation of the huntress you can muster. Have you noticed the water I left outside your den? I suppose I could say something to point it out, but a collapsed star finds it hard to speak. What has become of us, Artemis? Do we still love each other the way we did then? Can we know love at all?

I know a thousand ways to relight a fire, and nothing of stitching a wound, but I’d weave the last of my dying sun’s light into pools of spools of thread if it meant that anyone could close the gaping pain in your side. I know no better seamstress for such wounds than yourself; a huntress knows healing better than any physician, especially if the wound is inflicted by another of her kind.

Artemis’s first role was midwife, birthing her brother before she ever beheld a bow. Maybe that is why the mere idea of allowing anyone else to care for you is unthinkable. The only mark you’ll always miss is that of love for the self. I open my mouth to advise your aim, but realize I’ve never even notched an arrow, and so I allow you to continue on the endless hunt. For just a moment, you look like your old self again. Maybe, someday, if I can shine like my old self, you’ll see that there was never a blow you could not recover from, not even one dealt by the hand of your own disciple. For that chance alone, I’ll spend the rest of my life picking out shattered glass, removing the mirrorball to expose the sun. I hope you’ll wait for me. Faithfully,

Apollo