about the full moon / eclipse business
sometimes you just need to leave / escape / rush upon this blade
sometimes
you just can’t stay
sometimes
you need to go
sometimes
the hungry ghosts cry out
(and you might answer)
but keep walking anyway
you can’t live in places that wanted you to leave
that never made you feel at home
I’m preparing for a class on initiation and Aphrodite. She has always been my great initiator, the challenger who crooked her finger and said, “Come here. Come now.”
She tells me that there is love in leaving.
And I have been leaving for years. But I didn’t look back, so it seemed I was always moving along the same path.
I was leaving the moment I imagined something else.
I was leaving the moment I didn’t care about caring.
I was leaving when I decided what I did should make you stay. Should make you care. Again.
I was leaving the day I talked about you and not to you.
I was leaving long before you packed up the truck.
I open my fingers—
I let everything go.
—twilight, Louise Gluck
Maybe it’s the Scorpio full moon or the eclipse or the realization that I have the rest of your things in a box that’s ready to ship to the place I think you are. (I can’t be sure of your address anymore.)
Maybe it’s the rain in May that brings my attention downward, to the puddles, to the places I try to avoid, to the places that might soak me.
(They also might cleanse me.)
***
Each time I have walked a little faster or taken wider steps, the world has widened.
I have thrown things away, donated things, and put memories in a smaller box, the one at the back of the closet. The box I decorated with wedding stickers from a memory book kit.
I have deleted the draft emails. The ones where I wanted to explain everything so you would understand. So you would remember. So you would …
I have replaced the things we used to share. The gifts and the things our families thought we needed. The things we thought we needed for a lifetime.
But we didn’t. And I don’t.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that you bought an Escape. I shouldn’t have been startled by the quiet when your things were packed away.
I shouldn’t have been distracted by my own willingness to tell hopeful stories.
That were forgiving when you weren’t asking for forgiveness.
When you didn’t deserve it.
Maybe it is the moon. Maybe it is growth. Maybe it is healing.
Maybe I am eclipsing.
Maybe.
What I do know is that the universe or the godds or the beings who conspire for me are plotting bigger things. And for the bigger and the bolder, I need space. I need the leaving.
I need the letting go.
I need the walking away.
So I have.
So I do.
So I package it up in a box that will hold more than the dimensions can measure.
And I take a deep breath before the sword at my chest.
The one I’ve held there.
The one I trust in the plunging it could offer.
The one I trust in the slight trickle of blood because I was ready to rush the next.