Come to Life

Let this be the end of fine. 

I told you I went through something hard.  I saw the fear in your eyes, it was once in my own.  You quickly ask me if I’m okay now. 

I ask us both silently, when was I not okay? Was it when I had cancer? What about when I walked far from the edge of the bridge, lest I be tempted to jump, but still went to work and bought groceries? When I was outside-okay and inside-miserable?  When I was spread so thin, between the rock of my internal pressure to perform and find value in the eyes of others and the hard place of a world reflecting that back to me?  We did not wonder about my okay-ness then.  

What did the not-okay-ness of having cancer mean to you? What did it mean to me?  That I will die? That’s always been true and is still true.  That you will die?  That has always been true and is still true.

What does it mean when I reply that I am okay now? That we can forget it ever happened?  Pretend that my death, or yours, is any less certain?

All the landscapes of my experience, all the seasons inside of it. I don’t live there anymore, but the time I spent there changed me and wanting or needing me to be okay feels like a desire to build condos on a cemetery and pretend like nothing is buried there.  

Things were laid to rest in that cemetery, parts of me.  A breast, a layer of innocence, a dysfunctional relationship with work, habitual self-sacrifice, powering through, chronic overriding of my body’s request to stop, to rest, to be, to feel.  Echoes remain but they’re just echoes. 

Before I had cancer, I survived, nothing more.  Now I live, or at least try to. These past four years have been about coming to life.  

So I will not build condos on that cemetery, no one should live there, including me.  Nor will I build a monument there.  May I let it be a resting place for the past, the remains at peace, undisturbed and left to slowly return to ash. 

May I remember that fine and okay are just words, not promises.

May I honor the dead and remember that I am alive.  May I honor what has been and embrace what is. May I allow that tome of my life to be closed and placed upon a shelf while I turn to the next tome with a beginner’s mind.   

Magicienne

Your footfalls silenced by the soft forest floor, you move towards the meeting place where you never meet.  Closer still, greeted only by silence and a heavy wooden door.

Shelves of wood carved from knowing trees, lined with bottles and vials, potions and elixirs. Reminders that deep work is done here - transformations, macerations, alchemy.  That work is not your mystery to hold, it belongs to another, the one from the north who works in the shadows. 

The forest surrounds, grown so tall that daylight is subtle and soft, and the dark is never far. 

In this place,  past, present, and future are now.  

In this place, you are the night sky.  

Moon held softly in your hands, you whisper into the wind.  The wind that knows that past, present and future are now. 

It is to that wind that you make your offerings, that is the mystery you hold.  Discernment, knowing which spell to take off the shelf and speak into the wind. Faith, believing it will be heard and received.  

One more offering as you leave this place, a gift to the keeper of this space, honoring the devotion to her craft.   You walk away, honoring your devotion to your own. 

Be Witched

What if I took my own sword, heirloom and legacy, down from its place above the mantel and made it the sacred blood-letting tool for this rite?

And what if the shining blade of each scalpel that carved into me, was, in fact, the tip of that very sword? Shape shifted for precision work, cloaked and disguised for your hand so you could play high priest, lay me on your altar and slice me open again and again?  

That would mean it was always and ever only my ritual, not yours.  

That would mean I am Sorceress.

And what if each slice transformed me into a stained glass window, lit from behind by the moon? 

That would mean the reflection in the mirror that tells the story of deep cuts is a codex that speaks of a cauldron in my belly. 

That would mean the traces on my body are runes, crafted by me, for me.  Spells that etched themselves into my flesh, guided by the whispered invocations of my cells.  

That would mean my craft resides in my very flesh, the strongest spells from my grimoire scribed on my skin. 

What if those runes speak of pleasure, desire? What if they invoke power, presence?  

That would mean I am Witch.

A Prayer to a Season

Autumn calls me forth to honor and release.  Harvest and grieve.  

Wise Willow, I found you here, the living breath of your growth and survival an invitation to find you in me.  Sacred Birch, forever starry in my eyes, I found myself in your sky space for the first time.  Trees of my childhood who held me and offered me shelter and solace, mystery and magic, silent witnesses to the homeless ones within me.  

May I know you are here even when I cannot see you.  May I release myths of rootlessness and isolation, abandonment and rejection. May I relinquish the refugee and embrace the sovereign.  May I know I am as much a part of this forest as you. Nourished, safe, connected, home where I stand. May I know my roots intertwine with yours no matter how far I travel.  May I know I am always home, for I am here. 

Waters.  Temple tears, a call to dance, flow, feel, remember.  No drop of water is ever wasted, there is no such thing.  May I know this of my own waters.  

Dragonflies. Little books, tales of adventure and journeys beyond the illusions of limitations. 

May I hope, change, and love life as you do.  May I accept transformation and let it bring me into my fullest expression of beauty as you do, acceptance based on nothing but faith that it will be so. 

Weave, in and out, over and under. 

May I remember all this as the same artistry that also created me. May I see life through the stained glass window of your beauty.  May I cherish my breath as a cool autumn breeze. May I revere my tears as wild ocean waves.  May I worship my flesh as magnificent landscapes.  May I glorify my blood as hearth fire. 

That was out, now comes in.  

So far in that I find emptiness. The ribbons of others left to fall and furl back into their source. 

Channel or container, may I remember that here,  I am no thing, no one.  

May I remember that I am the promise of elements responding to the breath of the moment. 

Shimmery and reflective.  Water at night on a full moon, let me show you to you.  

May I dance us back home, sing us awake.  

 

It is done

She blinks, awakening to the harsh brush of rough stone beneath her fingertips, surprised to be standing. Images flood, not fall, into her eyes as they blink and pull her out of the trance only the deepest of art-making can bring.  Her nose just a breath away from that same stone, she cannot see the art that must be there. The smeared paint on her fingertips tell her it is there and that she has made it.  Or been a part of its making.

The echo of a whispered possibility of a somewhere else that might have been or might be floats down, soft as rose incense into the cave.  How does she know this place is down? Because nowhere this dark could exist anywhere else.

Rose calls to her, she follows. 

She moves through worlds, free.  Memories of a someone who might have been her a lifetime ago float in as scents change and light becomes a possibility.  Those memories dance and flow around her, brightly painted scarves she doesn't need to wear.  She feels no chill in this air.

Steady footsteps, her own, land and ground on each step as they appear before her.  She climbs, breath strong, steady, and sure. No rush, no effort.  She does not wonder about what comes next, there is no next, only now.

Exiting what was and what has been, seven staircases later, her feet are met by the caress of morning dew, soft medicine like the tears she has wept, a promise of a sun that will rise.  She casts a final glance to the steps she has climbed, the unseen spiral they formed.  It is done. She sits in the grass wet with the promise of morning and becomes part of that promise.