V's words

rattle - 10.25.22

the earth quakes.

the bones of the old house rattle like a cough stuck between ribs. like a heat shield dragging on asphalt. a tremor in the hand.

my foot misses a step, asks a question of the floor. I keep not finding the ground where it means to be. where I mean it to be.

our creaking wood boards are hollow with termites. live oak and cherrywood dusted with shit and sand, crumbling like cliffs into the ocean. time passes in circles. the teacups clatter in the cupboard. the handprint on my back becomes an interview with lonely space.

the dogs bark. my coffee goes cold. your jacket is pulled from the hook next to mine. your daily pace is outweighed, inverted. a constellation of change. cataloging each crack in the foundation with too much sleep and a hungry heart. blindfolded at the edge of the canyon, one foot off the rock.

I brace myself in the door frame. what to make of it? music in the far distance that I cannot hear. paint crusted between bristles, interrupted expectation. the colors bleed from my wrists and ankles, antithesis of my chosen hues. abstraction where realism is begged for.

I am lost. the house is empty. the earthquake chased the finches from the trees. my map, my blueprints, my schema, crumbling like the hardwood. sinking into groundwater. the quicksand of uncertain hopes. fortunes lost between the floorboards, the sets incomplete.

the floor answers the question: there is no ending. no middle. no beginning. you must cope with freefall, with the burden of holding the end of the tightrope, with the steel that screeches and bends when the earth's lungs give out. you are the finch striking the window, wings in wretched ruin.

ferrying my heart some three thousand miles away

while I clutch the pillow that still smells like you

and try to sleep

no room on the wheel - 3.13.26

Spring lets Winter slip from her shoulders and flutter, disposable, to the ground. She breathes cyanide-sweet possibilities to the larks and bluebells as frail buds float up from the earth. Her Equinox: when my Others unfurl their petals and branches and fiddlehead ferns and relax, boneless with relief.

My middle sister: born of Ostara. Plentiful seeds caught and growing safely in the copper kettle between her ribs. Her Craft: the tender balance between hearts, her well of deep feeling, which somehow still manages to perfectly balance the light and dark. Her skin shining with the soft light of freshly planted life.

My youngest sister: born of Beltane, lavender cradling her fragile skull, feet beating circles round the maypole. Purity, wide eyed wonder, the fertility of possibility in her dance.

these aren't footsteps I follow.

Nor can I temper Leo Summer, where my brother rides high on the mount of long days, sun-heavy and solar-high. The cycle turning to Litha like the jut of his chin as he laughs, stretches the days, sings his blessings, gathers his loving court. Salt-kissed, beads of sand and sweat between freckles, a vibrant burst of heat behind his eyes.

My eyes burn in those July hours. Skin smoking, craters of exhaustion in my chest. I lock horns with days that refuse to end.

Winter, my hearth, then? Bare branches like stick figures rising above the creek, short lived shadows on the covered bridge. Our Spirit guide going to ground, turning skeletal and silent in the frosted grass, dead to us til the Wheel turns again. The cold like an ache in the teeth, a sluggish wool in the limbs. The cold that makes me sink to the bottom of the pond like a stone, give up my hope for anything better, tuck my hands into folds of darkness and wait quietly for the ending.

The cold - it must be winter: I am a Cold-Blooded thing.

Except. Except for when I burst forth with fire, passion and verse, manic embers scraping burns into my core. When you hold me, and I combust; or when I shudder with rage, amygdala overclocking high heat warnings; or when I'm seized with the Spark that reanimates the dead, again and again, despite my best efforts.

Perhaps, then: Autumn bonfire. After all, ochre leaves have always woven themselves into the folds of my skirts. I am a soldier of the Harvest - of the culling. Born out of anger and desperation from the death knells of Soulslove, bursting like a whip crack into the thin Veil between the realms, the first frost of the season trailing from my stained fingertips. A Samhain beastie, a bit of Halloween plastic, the rot in the grin of the jack-o-lantern.

Perhaps Spring is my antithesis, if I am the thatch of weeds that strangles new growth and rallies at the dying of the sun. The light and the leaves expand and join hands, and I slip into an unmooring sleep, coma-like in its power, waking only for fits of whining incuriousity. A Realm that remains locked to my kind, loneliness in the snake hole at the bottom of the bursting garden. An afterthought - or no thought, at all, even; something to be discarded, forgotten, until the leaves yellow and the dead come to roost.

The merry birdsong, the wings of gossamer dandelion seedlings on the warm breeze, the sudden jarring hour-shift where time begins to lie, they grate. They hollow me.