#shamanfox

it’s the quiet way two souls

remember each other

* she was is a nova.

an early stage cosmic entity on two legs

dispersing light & heat throughout our galaxy that we witnessed. *

none could touch only append, appreciate  from afar

hoping our fusion or fission would amass as the urgency of her mission:  *

making meaning from the nebulous ether

to emulate, to emanate -

aching to be exhaled, yet never set free.

A door stands ajar, trembling in its frame, an inhale before decision, a breath before surrender.

It invites, it refuses, it begs— to be flung wide or finally closed.

But the hand lingers, fingers tracing the threshold, caught in the gravity of almost.

Hesitation clings like mist before a storm,

thick as the breath before a confession, where futures teeter like candle flames, wavering between what is and what could be.

One moment longer—one second too late.

The precipice dissolves, and with it, the leap

that could have been.

Between each pulse, the universe expands, stretching the soul in unseen ways, forging destinies in the fragile spaces where nothing and everything collide.

A held breath. A lingering hand. A door half-shut.

@shamanfox

I am

A decade changes a person quietly at first. One gray hair. Then twenty. Then suddenly the reds are gone beneath a white wash that catches bathroom light like winter frost. My hair won’t grow much past my shoulders anymore. It just gives up there, every single time, as if it also has lower back pain and no longer believes in long-term goals. Same haircut for ten years. Not from loyalty to fashion. From exhaustion.

I gained fifty pounds once. Carried it around like grief in grocery bags. Now I’m down thirty-five of it and still negotiating with mirrors that remember every version of me at once. I grow hair sporadically on my body now, in random places, with the chaotic confidence of weeds breaking through sidewalk cracks. Meanwhile the hair on my head has decided ambition is overrated.

I need reading glasses to shave. That feels like a betrayal nobody warns you about. One day you’re young and reckless, the next you’re squinting at your own ankle under fluorescent bathroom lighting like an archaeologist examining ruins.

I put my teeth in the nightstand at night now. That sentence alone should qualify me for a senior discount and a free bowl of soup. There’s something humbling about removing parts of yourself before bed like you’re closing down a small business.

I don’t have periods anymore either. No ceremony. No final episode. My uterus simply Irish exited from the chat. Honestly, rude. After decades of torment, cramps, surprise bloodbaths, and ruined underwear, it just disappeared without even leaving a thank-you card.

My muscles hurt after exertion. They hurt after sleeping wrong. They hurt after existing with enthusiasm. Upper back pain lives between my shoulder blades like an unpaid tenant. Occasionally my lower back sends out sharp little lightning bolts just to keep my nervous system alert and spiritually humble. IBS with constipation means I now discuss bowel movements with the seriousness other people reserve for stock markets and religion.