The Price of Prophecy

By Ailisha O'Sullivan

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Peace on earth
good will toward men.
 
And then the soldiers came.
 
The decree had gone forth
that all male children
under the age of two
were to be killed.
 
Such wailing and keening
such crying and screaming
would have drowned the chorus
of the angels in the Bethlehem sky --
only the angels were long gone.
No angels came.
 
Stop.
Yes.
One time before
long, long before
when Pharaoh decreed
that all male Israelite babes
be killed at birth:
Then angels
midwife angels
saved them,
let them live.
 

But now

even as Mary and Joseph
warned by one solitary angel
spirit the promised child
to the strange safety of Pharaoh's land
in accordance with one prophecy,
Rachel weeps over her children
and will not be comforted
in accord with another.
 
For fulfilling a prophecy
is a pricy affair,
and even the life of the child now spared
will one day be forfeit too
for the life of the world.

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Ailisha O’Sullivan graduated with an honours degree in History and English Literature from University College Cork, Ireland, and worked in the Chicago Public Library system for several years as a librarian and storyteller before moving to Cluj, Romania, where she held a position as managing editor at Koinónia Publishing. She currently divides her time between translation and editing projects and working with local non-profit organisations. Her work has been published in the Scriblerus Arts Journal, the Amethyst Review and the Dime Show Review.