'Glossalalia, The Kingdom of the High Priestess' by Julie (ISSUE 2-JUNE 26')

I. OMEN

The Tower keeps flashing before my sorrowful eyes because apparently the universe believes

in repetition. Apparently, collapse is not a singular event but a decorating style. The

repetition opposes all normality in my mind. Flashing words that tell me the problem with

becoming beautiful on purpose is that eventually your reflection starts to feel employed.

The Devil waits for me in the polished silver of my chamber mirror, reflecting my makeup

like bruises, hiding my sinful comportment while displaying a modicum of too much

intricacy. The halo above my vanity burns like a consecrated wound - a saint’s aureole forged

not from divinity but molten selfishness. A martyr’s crown of objectification that diminishes

my hollow, impure soul to nothing but a quiescent metaphor.

Candle wax gathers on my wrists like misplaced punctuation, warm and holy against the red

velvet decay it melts itself into. The truest form of despair is a glowing screen mistaking

notifications for desire. I carry the grief of being born too late like inherited silk. A

tenderness that wasn’t manufactured disappears as a crow in talks with the witches

disappears behind a fence.

Artificial vanilla incense threads itself through the cathedral of my lungs like the rusted

dagger reserved for saints and traitors alike—an execution staged privately at the center of

the square, though somehow every spectator still turns toward me. Adrenaline rings through

my bloodstream like chapel bells summoning a congregation everyone flocks to willingly,

devoted to watching the hay-wired noose make the swirls of smoke enter the small shafts of

my lungs, and exit like a lamb escaping the slaughter with every trembling burst of

adrenaline. Drawn not to my holiness, but to the spectacle of watching something delicate

burn publicly.

II. MARTYRDOM

Beneath the porcelain of my composure sat an endless chalice of red wine meant for public

communion. Terrified of becoming forgettable, I joined the congregation myself, drinking

from my own suffering with stained, desperate lips and reverent hands, I obeyed no matter

the sin. Seawater gathered in my eyes like baptismal ruin while I prayed for an angelfish to

choose me as its temporary altar. The salt gnawed at me with saintly precision, but I

welcomed the sting all the same. Some desperate part of me believed that suffering becomes

bearable once it is useful to something beautiful.

I preserved my tears in the purest amber and wore them at my throat as prayer candles

melted against cathedral carpentry. My sterling silver necklace pierced at my wings with the

delicate cruelty reserved for holy things, yet I maintained the composure of a painted saint

before the theatre crowd. But how willingly I sat among them, reverent and wide-eyed,

consuming the performance of my sorrow alongside the rest of the congregation took away

my pristine virginity and covered my peasant hands with the dirt of enjoying it.

III. COURTLY LOVE / MISREADING

The priestess with braids that remain stagnantly untouched with the freys of labour is the

one devout enough for a saint’s worship. Knights only carve your initials like tympanums

into their weapons, aimed at anyone who dares lust at you with their daggering gaze if your

face is clean and clear like the holy water they swore their fidelity to. That very fidelity they

gamble on your desirability. Perhaps the saint sees the braids purely because they look like

something you can plaster and display in the chapel. What if the knight parades you in front

of the empress to gain recognition of his victorious labour? The kaleidoscope displays a

stained glass of love, so long as I don’t turn it with my wax-sealed palms.

My tarot card is adorned with buttery shades of yellow, delicate violets, deep red outlines

people look past, and the defining flowy angel-wing-white dress that weaves my body just

right. The kind of card people ignore the meaning of, but display in an aureate coffin

masquerading as decoration. My grace adds a touch to everybody’s musky inelegance, but

through my saintly spiral of worship, I came to an ungodly realization. Nobody ever asked if I

was enjoying myself.

IV. RELIQUARY

Something has been wearing my face for many an awakening less moon. It had remained

long enough to become indistinguishable from my own breathing, and just like my own

breathing, it should remain there forever. Perhaps I permitted it sanctuary because loneliness

makes even affliction feel holy. Maybe I loved it merely because it was the only thing that

cared enough to stay. The only thing that I saw was what resulted in my devilish bruises, and

I didn’t call the clergy for my sorceric afflictions.

I see all the other somethings peering through the stained-glass windows to their souls. The

blood red filters their gaze to pure violence that diminishes me to nothing but a bloody sin,

devastated by a fallen eyelash too much self-awareness. I shuffle my body to the blue hues

that make my mahogany hair an introductory plank for the deep indigo ocean that is my

delicate, velvet rope-like skin. My angel wings prove to be the catalyst of others’ devotion; the

one element defining my ethereal supernaturality. Perhaps holiness is nothing more than

silence rendered beautiful enough to worship.

V. CONFESSION

Only long after victimizing my own suffering did I realize I had helped construct the

cathedral that buried me. I starved the ugly parts of myself from the portrait. I learned which

wounds were photographed softly beneath cathedral light. It creates a sacrilegious image you

can’t peel your unsatisfied eyes from, although the sheer disgust of it persists, all normality.

As I peel gold leaf off the cathedral walls, I shudder, discovering my own fingerprints

underneath. Perhaps I spent a fortnight too long staring at the man of sorrows that the crown

of thorns weaved a protective callous for my closed-minded victimization. Maybe I loitered

too heavily, analyzing what prayer candle glass reflected the best on me, creating a palace out

of my disillusionment, all while searing my hands dry and bitter like they were made to be.

The soft red velvet stage was made to soften the sound of my voice, not their cheers. There

was more irony in the days of realization of how amplified their enthusiasm was when I was

quiet. When my sobbing brought me down to a level of disrepair, so that they could feel

better when they fixed my gears. The closer I was to my velvet defeat, the more possible it

was to analyze my microscopic pores.

VI. LAST RITES

Today, as I ascend the stage with my broken legs once more, I devote myself to a new

experiment: I perform my solitude. I exhibit myself before an audience that's been there

forever, rehearsing expressions no living soul remains present to witness. Yet the moment I

read my loneliness in the pages everybody hands themself to, my body collapses against the

wooden floorboards with the exhausted heaviness of a saint thrown unwillingly into her

tomb. I find myself in a deep slumber beneath the dim cathedral lighting, drowning in the

velvet fuzz that coats my throat dry.

The theatre empties too quickly. Those who once arrived faithfully vanish without grace to

the clergy, as though my humanity had ruined the spectacle irreparably. I had believed the

response would echo through the streets in my absence — they would press themselves

against old brick cathedrals and cry out as though sending a desperate prayer. Instead, the

city remains devastatingly still. My disappointment was met with nothing but silence vast

enough to dwarf every performance I had mistaken for intimacy.

I drag my finger against the gold-leaf lining of my Bible until the paper splits my skin, but

the wound stings differently without somebody present to romanticize the blood. There is no

trembling hand extending a bandage. No audience left to transform injury into something

sacred.

I retreat to my quarters and offer the crowded room a solemn greeting, but nothing answers

beyond my own reflection staring back with the distant wonder. I apply my makeup before a

crumbling brick wall because, without reaction of distorted peasant faces, I no longer

understand what to do with mine. Every gesture feels absent. Every expression collapses

before reaching meaning. I keep waiting for guidance to descend from somewhere above me

in careful language, though I never learned how to survive outside the performance.

Nobody warned me that surviving would feel so ordinary.

The audience departed without a word, and for the first time, there was nobody left to

translate my suffering into something beautiful.