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.